Aperture Science Applied
by Eternal Density
Summary: A secret from Sam's past results in havoc. Will this mean Earth's doom or bring much needed help? SamJack, JanetDaniel. Season 8. Involves fun with wormholes, Jaffa, and Siler's wrench.
1. The Dare

Disclaimer: I don't own any Stargate Intellectual property. This is written for fun, not money. That said, this is my story so please don't take it without attribution.  
Notes: This story takes place in Season 8. The first few chapters are some time after Icon (not that that's important), and then it jumps forward a little to after Endgame (which is important). And because I'm the writer and can do what I want (without paying the cast), Janet is alive. Oh and the story title is just something funny I came up with a few minutes ago because I couldn't think of a good title (and Portal references are the in thing). Anyhow, on with the story!

Chapter 1 – The Dare

Daniel leaned back in his chair with a smile, having finished the last of his spicy food. Then he remembered why he was here and his expression turned serious. He cleared his throat and addressed the woman sitting opposite. "Janet, you said you had something you needed to tell me."

"Oh. That." Janet had almost forgotten the reason for this meeting. The meal had been accompanied by friendly conversation about their pasts, and veiled comments about their work. They couldn't exactly talk about what went on under Cheyenne Mountain in public, but they could still laugh about their experiences without being specific.

"Well? Are you sure it's nothing bad?"

"I don't think it is. Actually, it's not anything vital, just something I thought I should say."

"It's something I've been wondering about all evening," Daniel prodded, managing not to sound too impatient.

"Yes, well..." Janet wondered how she'd got herself into this mess, and thought back to how it all started.

_Earlier that day, after an off-world mission..._

"And that's the last of them," Doctor Janet Frasier proclaimed as she set down her instruments and began to clean up.

Sam Carter looked at the row of tiny stitches that now graced her hand. "Neat job," she complimented.

"I've had a lot of practice on Daniel," the base CMO explained ruefully. "How did he escape unscathed this time?"

"Oh, he got lucky for a change."

"It can't last. I'm sure he'll be in here being patched up within a few days." Janet almost seemed hopeful.

"The post-mission checkup isn't enough Daniel time for you?" Sam teased.

"Daniel time? He's one of my worst behaved patients! I was meaning that I'm glad to be rid of him so soon today," Janet protested. However, she knew it wasn't true, and this was obvious to her audience.

Sam shook her head. "Nope, that's not what you meant. Otherwise you might let one of the nurses do his checkup."

"Daniel's too valuable for that. I need to do those myself," Janet reasoned.

"Jealous."

"Sam!"

"Why don't you ask him out to dinner, since you can't wait for him to be back in the infirmary?"

"Why doesn't he ask me?" Janet shot back.

"Janet, you know how oblivious he can be."

"Point."

"But you want him to, don't you? So you might as well do it yourself."

"I don't think he... his wife... well..."

"It's been years since all that happened. You're just making excuses," Sam answered. "Which is proof that you want it. I know you were beyond simple concern when he was trapped off-world after that war he tried to stop. Ask him out while you're both still alive."

"Alright, I'll ask him out. On one condition." Janet gave a sneaky smile.

"Now that's just mean!"

Janet shook her head. "Fair's fair. I'm only doing this if you do something too."

"Fine, what is it?"

"There's a line in your medical file marked with the highest confidentiality. It's been puzzling me for years. I want the details."

"I... okay It's a deal, so long as you go first."

Janet nodded. "Fair enough." She pulled out her pen and wrote a quick note. "You're free to go. Here's a prescription from some antibiotics for the next couple of days. See me if there are any signs of infection. Oh, and sent Daniel back in. There's a small matter I need to discuss with him."

"I'll be sure to tell him," Sam answered, winking.

A little later Daniel poked his head (figuratively) back into the infirmary. Janet quickly spotted him and waved him over. "You wanted to see me?" he asked. As he'd already been cleared, he was curious as to why he had been asked to return.

"Yes, Daniel. There's a matter I need to discuss with you in private."

"A... matter?"

She didn't want him to worry. "Oh, nothing bad. Just personal. Could we meet somewhere off the base?"

"Ahh..." He didn't understand why she was asking, but he certainly didn't mind. "Sure, we can do that."

"Are you free for dinner tonight?"

"Dinner? I suppose I can if I leave my translations until tomorrow..."

"Daniel, dinner time isn't in work hours. You shouldn't be translating anything except menus until tomorrow," she reminded.

"Oh. Yes, you're right. How does Thai sound?"

"You don't need to dress up... oh, Thai food. Sounds good."

"There's that new place..."

"Which has been open for two years," Janet pointed out. Daniel had missed a few things while ascended and still hadn't qutite caught up.

"True. See you at, say, seven?"

"Seven it is."

Daniel nodded and returned to his lab with a mixture of anticipation and anxiety.

_Back in the present..._

"Hellooo, Janet?" called a familiar voice from somewhere nearby.

"Wha?"

"You kinda zoned out for a few moments there," Daniel's concerned voice explained.

"Sorry, I was... thinking."

"It's that bad?"

"What is?"

"What you're about to tell me."

"No, no. It's just difficult. Um, this was good. Dinner. I mean, with you."

"Yes?" Daniel was now completely lost. "What are you saying?"

"I'd like to do this again, if you'd like to."

"Kill me with suspense again? I'd rather not if I can help it."

"No Daniel, I meant us going out for dinner."

Daniel blinked several times, trying to sort out what she was saying. "You're asking me on a... date?"

"Another date."

"This is a date? I thought it was two co-workers having dinner for the purpose of you telling me something."

"That was just an excuse."

"You mean you don't have something to tell me?"

"I did; that was it."

"What was?"

"I... I asked you out to dinner to ask you on a date," Janet finally admitted.

"Oh. Why?"

"Well... Sam pestered me, and... I've been wanting to for, well, years."

"Sam put you up to this?"

"She provided enough incentive for me to ask. Not that going out with you isn't incentive enough, but..."

"But?"

Janet sighed. "The typical paradox of being afraid to ask for fear of being turned down."

"Is that why you used the excuse of needing to tell me something in private?"

The medical doctor nodded slowly. "I wanted to avoid the pressure of this being a date, to see if it would work."

"Next time you do something like that, find a way to do it without leaving me wondering all night whether I have only a week to live," Daniel requested.

"I said it was nothing bad."

"And I tell you I'm fine when I'm obviously not," Daniel argued.

"I can't believe you actually admitted that!" Janet exclaimed with a laugh. "When Cassie hears about this..."

"Please don't tell anyone I said that!" Daniel begged.

"What do I get out out it?"

"I won't tell Sam that you tricked me into a date," he answered cleverly.

There was no way Janet wanted Sam to find out about that. She might try using it to get out of their arrangement. "Deal."

"By the way, what did Sam agree to do in return for me asking you out?"

"Sorry, that's covered by doctor\patient confidentiality."

_The next day..._

Two figures slipped silently into a small coffee shop. After procuring a steaming cup each, they found a private booth in a secluded corner.

"Well?" Sam asked.

Janet simply replied, "I held up my end of the bargain,"

Sam waited for more.

"And we're going out again next week," the CMO added.

Sam nodded. "What do you want to know?"

"Pregnancy brought to full term. Fifteen years ago. No other information given. Spill."

Sam nodded and begain to explain. It was about time she told her friend about this part of her past.


	2. Offspring

Chapter 2 – Offspring

"I was working on my PhD. I couldn't finish it and look after a child. I was still aiming for NASA, and a kid would get in the way of that. But I knew I couldn't justify killing my child for my career, so I chose adoption. I was afraid I might have trouble giving the baby away if I became attached, so I told them not to even tell me if I had a boy or girl. All I know is he or she was given to a good family who couldn't have another child of their own." Sam stopped for a breath, and to see Janet's reaction to her admission.

"And no one knew?" Janet asked.

Sam was very much relieved at the question. She'd been afraid Janet might react badly. "No one apart from my doctor and a few lab assistants I swore to secrecy. I kept away from everyone else by claiming the project was at a critical stage. Even my dad, over the Christmas holidays."

"So... you have a child somewhere in the world who you'll never meet." Janet appeared curious rather than judgemental.

Sam nodded sadly and explained, "Probably not. I did make one condition. If the kid's adoptive parents die while she or he is still a minor, I'll be first in line for custody."

"Good idea," Janet answered, sipping her coffee. "Now that you've told me, it will probably happen some time soon."

"Janet, this is real life, not one of those movies where every little conversation is foreshadowing for something that will happen in a later scene."

"True, but I think you'll agree our lives have been far from normal." That was the understatement of the year. The lives of everyone working under NORAD were nowhere near normal.

"Still, there are days I can't help hoping, even though I enjoy being the commander of SG-1." The lieutenant colonel looked wistful.

"That's the natural mothering instinct," Janet categorised.

"Hence the dates with Daniel?" was the teasing reply.

"Hey, we're talking about you, not me. Which brings me to the next point: who's the father?"

This was the part Sam had been dreading. "I met a guy outside a bar."

"Outside?"

"I was having a bad day in the lab and needed a walk to clear my head and let some ideas fall into place. This utterly gorgeous guy walked past and I was instantly..."

"Smitten?"

"Yeah. I was a goner. He was amazing... but I was still too shy to\give him my number or even my real name. I wasn't after a relationship, I just wanted to forget about theories and equations for a few hours."

"And you got more than you bargained for."

"Yeah."

"So he has no idea he has a kid?"

"None. He's completely clueless." Sam realised too late that she'd chosen her words poorly.

Janet's brow furrowed. "You've seen him since?" she realised.

"Yeah, but it was so long ago that I'm pretty sure he doesn't remember me. If he did, he'd have said something by now." Great, by explaining she'd found herself saying even more.

"You mean it's someone on base?" This was a far bigger revelation that Janet had hoped to hear.

Sam locked her eyes on the table. "I've already said far more that I intended." There was no way she wanted Janet to discover the whole truth.

Her friend shrugged. "That's alright. You've said enough." It was disappointing, but she knew it had to stop somewhere. "A girl has to keep some secrets."

"So you're not telling me whether you've kissed Daniel yet?"

"It was only the first date!"

"Since when has that stopped Daniel?"

"Hey! No talking about people behind their backs."

"It was a fair comment," Sam argued.

"I'm tempted to make a 'fair comment' about General O'Neill."

"Oh?" replied Sam in well-feigned innocence. She refused to be baited.

"Never mind."

Sam decided it a change of subject was due. "How's Cassie been?"

"She's been better behaved since the close call I had a few months back. Nearly losing me scared her a lot, but it's turned out for the best." Janet shuddered at the memory of the ambush she'd been surprised by in one of her few excursions off-world. As a result there had been a lot of fuss and investigation into the decision to allow her off-world.

"Did you ever go out with that interviewer guy, Bregman?" Sam wondered. She hadn't heard any mention of him since the film project had ended.

"No, nearly dying got in the way, and… it wouldn't have gone anywhere. He was a nice man, but… not my type."

"And you don't want to settle for anything less than Daniel," the astrophysicist added.

"True enough. But we were talking about Cassandra."

"Yes, we were," Sam replied in an amused tone. Now Janet was changing the topic.

"She hasn't shown any signs of relapse into her condition," Janet said carefully. Alien retroviruses weren't a legal topic for coffee shops.

"That's good to hear. I was worried that the cure might not be permanent. The, uh, doctor who cured her isn't someone I'd trust." Particularly given all Nirti had done to Cassandra and her planet.

"Me neither, especially after what she did to Jonas. I'm glad she's dead."

"What did you think of Jonas?" Sam asked, curious.

"He was a very interesting young man. And he was medically fascinating. But he was no Daniel Jackson."

"Cassie liked him," Sam said cheekily. "Imagine..."

"No," Janet interrupted firmly.

"I mean from a viewpoint of genetic advancement..."

"Just no. Though while we're on the topic, I'm glad to hear you have offspring of some description. Imagine how smart your kid would be. It would be a pity if a genius such as yourself had no children," Janet suggested.

"You have a point there, but I try not to think about it," Sam admitted. "It's tough, having a kid and not knowing anything about him or her. Sometimes I wonder if I made the right choice, but then I remember how vital my job is."

Janet nodded sadly. "It's pity it's not easier to balance the two. I feel lucky having Cassie without having to raise her from birth. Questions like this are tough. For instance, Charlie O'Neill. If he was still alive, his father might not have been sent on a certain mission. But on the other hand, his death was – and still is – an awful thing. Plus, the general is another person who has genetics which ought to be propagated. It's a pity he doesn't have any kids."

"Yeah, a real shame."

Author's Note: before adding this author's note, this chapter had eleventy-eleven words.  
Hope you enjoyed this revelation. Thanks for all the reviews and update alerts!!  
response to the reviewer known as ?????: Good guess, but no cookie.  
More will come soon!


	3. Xtreme Physics

Chapter 3 – X-treme Physics

_A couple of months later..._

Three human figures stood in a well-stocked, well-lit physics laboratory which was located in a fairly quiet block of the United States. The room was not especially wide, but it was fairly long in order to maximise the available distance. The three people wore white lab-coats and insulating protective gloves and were currently involved in preparing for the next test. "What's the power level?" the person in charge of the experiment asked.

Trent, a young sandy-haired laboratory assistant, read a display and answered, "It's up to ninety-one percent charged."

His 'boss' nodded and double checked some power couplings. "I think it's stable enough." She typed a command into her laptop and listened for the confirming beeps. "It's prepared to open the portal when it reaches full power. Masks!"

The occupants of the room donned their darkly tinted face masks. They were uncomfortable but necessary as there was still a chance of dangerous radiation being generated. "Ninety-six percent!" Trent called.

Tammy, a short, dark-haired woman, triple-checked her part of the setup. "All sensors are online and cameras are focussed and rolling."

"Portal parameters uploaded to distortion ring controls," the young woman in charge confirmed. "Ready for power burst."

"Ninety-nine percent." You could cut the anticipation with a cold blunt knife.

"Wait for it..." fingers tapped impatiently on a tabletop. Everyone's attention was focussed on one of the two small rings which sat upright at either end of the laboratory. A tangle of thick electrical windings and coils surrounded each, joined by a web of glowing green coolant tubes.

"Power transfer complete. Opening portal!" Trent shouted excitedly. The rings vibrated slightly and the coils hummed. Due to the careful construction, nothing shook loose or showered sparks. The laptop emitted a long warning beep before an unstable plasma jet shot a short distance away from each ring towards the ends of the room. The blue energy was quickly sucked back inwards, forming a rippling skin on each ring.

"Portal formed!" the head researcher squealed unprofessionally. Collecting herself, she stepped over to Trent and eyed his readouts. "Uh... power draw is low and stable at acceptable predicted levels. Sensors?"

"No radiation bursts," Tammy confirmed from across the room. "Portal is safe and stable. Radio signal traversal confirmed. Experiment can proceed."

Keeping her mask on, the head researcher picked up a small digital thermometer and pushed it slowly through one ring. It instantly dropped out of the other into a padded tray. She followed it with an accelerometer. "Readings?" She returned to her laptop as her female technician looked over the data.

"Four degree temperature drop and 2.3 metre per second velocity increase," Tammy reported.

The news was greeted with a sigh of frustration. "Still too much. My calculations still aren't quite right. Hang on a second... given the increased stability due to the improved dampeners..." Her hands flew over the keyboard as she thought aloud. "Yep, I'm overcompensating for instability. It needs less power to maintain the portal so the extra power has to leak away somehow... This should fix it..." The laptop emitted a series of happy beeps. "Yes, it's stayed open. Tammy, report?"

"No change in stability," was the succinct reply.

The girl resent her probes. "How's that?"

"Three point eight degree temperature drop and no detectable velocity increase."

"Nice! But I'm worried about the temperature drop. It means something has to be calibrated incorrectly." She unconsciously bit her lip as she mentally reviewed the setup. "Trent, grab the tape and measure the distance," she ordered.

Trent retrieved a tape measure from a cabinet and measured from the top of one ring to the other. "Fourteen metres," he reported.

"Fourteen? It should be fifteen! Did you check it before we started?"

Trent looked guilty. "Uh... no."

The girl's eyes narrowed. "How many times to I have to remind you: the cleaner moves the trolleys to check that the floor's clean, ever since you left metal filings all over the place."

"Sorry Cynthia. It won't happen again," Trent said apologetically.

"Hmm, try moving the trolley while the portal is active. Slowly. I want to see if that will fix it. Just don't pull out any cables or tubes," she warned.

"Don't worry, kid, I'll be careful," Trent answered as he unlocked the wheels on a trolley (the origin one, since Tammy was standing at the destination ring).

"Ahem."

"Sorry." Trent still struggled to avoid calling Cynthia 'kid', despite some of the accidents that had befallen him as a result. "Slip of the tongue." He measured the distance again and made a small adjustment. "Fifteen metres."

"You're lucky the rings are too small to fit your head through," Cynthia muttered darkly. "Tammy?"

"Still stable and ready for probes."

"Trent can send them, in case something goes wrong this time," Cynthia instructed, forcing the young man to traverse the room to retrieve the equipment. He did so willingly, relieved that his punishment was nothing worse.

"Probes read stable temperature and velocity," Tammy indicated, her voice not betraying the importance of the achievement. This was because she was dedicated to doing her job properly and refused to show excitement. Plus, it had taken a couple of weeks to get to this point, so it had become routine. Creating a wormhole across the room had become commonplace for her since the first time it had worked.

Trent allowed himself a happy grin and Cynthia could not resist a quick 'happy dance' before getting down to business. "Next test: organic matter. Subject: one tomato." She nodded to Trent who sent the item through.

Tammy took a scalpel to the transported produce and reported, "Subject appears unharmed by transport. Interior is consistent and aroma is normal."

"Great," Cynthia approved. "I'm adding an extra test before we move to live testing. Subject: Trent's lunch."

"My turkey sandwich? But... I need to eat that!" Trent protested.

"I could make it a pound of your flesh if you prefer."

Trent retrieved his paper-wrapped sandwich. "Uh... I guess it should be safe to eat."

"We'll see. Proceed."

Trent surrendered his lunch to subspace and it was soon in Tammy's hands. "Food item appears to have been successfully transported. Its fitness for human consumption will be determined at the next meal break." She sounded serious but her eyes danced with humour.

Cynthia moved on to the real work. "Next test: living invertebrate creatures. Subject: ants. This is the big one, to see if they are still alive on the other side or whether it messes up their nervous systems somehow." She watched intently as Trent checked that the lid of the ant container would stay secure. It was sent through to Tammy who checked it through a magnifying glass.

"They're all still moving," Tammy reported after a careful examination. "Transport was a complete success."

"Final test of this phase: living mammals. Subject: gerbils, unenclosed."

Trent arranged the creatures' cage at the destination ring, ready to receive the travellers. When it was in position he took one gerbil in each hand and walked back to the other end of the room. "Ready to send travellers."

"Portal is stable, cameras are still recording," Tammy confirmed. Cynthia nodded and Trent sent each animal through the event horizon in turn. They immediately dropped into their cage.

"Rodents have arrived. They appear slightly disoriented but unharmed.

Cynthia let out a breath she hadn't realised she was holding. "That's a relief. I won't be fully satisfied until we can send through something more intelligent, but all signs are positive so far."

"Too bad we can't fit a cat through the rings. Perhaps a kitten?"

"Say that again and I'll put your pet snake through."

"We're at thirty minutes. Wormhole will close in eight minutes," Tammy warned.

"Send the gerbils through again and do a few more tests with the probes. We might as well do something while we wait to check that the cut-off period is still the same," Cynthia instructed. "I'll go over the buffer programming while you're at it."

Trent nodded. "Will do, Boss."

AN: Girl Geniuses start young these days. I wonder why that would be? Thanks for the lovely reviews.  
Anon reply to ?????: She'll get her own personality of course. And the multiple of their brains I guess.


	4. Reversal

Chapter 4 – Reversal

Eight minutes later, the portal destabilised and shut down, as expected. Tammy pronounced the gerbils unaffected by their multiple trips through subspace and Trent was happy with the overall power usage statistics. Cynthia had removed the uncomfortable mask and was running a hand through her long blond hair as she read through screens of dense coding.

"How much longer?" Trent asked, hoping there was time for a break.

Cynthia frowned. "Actually, I'll be at least another hour. There are a few more factors I need to account for in this subroutine." She checked her watch. "It's not late enough for lunch yet, so you can have some study time." Tammy and Trent both had their own university work which took up most of the time when Cynthia didn't need them in the lab. They both quietly retrieved textbooks, notes, and other materials that they'd stashed in various cabinets and set to work. 'At least an hour' meant between two and the rest of the day.

Three and a half hours later, the remaining issues had been worked out and Cynthia was confident that a test wouldn't result in catastrophic failure. "Time to earn your keep, people!" she called, pulling Trent out of a daydream in which he was the one doing groundbreaking research. It was tough being a mere assistant to someone far younger than himself, but it paid well.

Tammy put away her books and began prepping the cameras and sensors. Trent checked over the power couplings to ensure that nothing had been disturbed and Cynthia oversaw the upload of the latest control program. "All clear," Trent declared after checking the integrity of both rings. "Ready for power transfer?"

Cynthia compared the approximate charging time to the upload time and concluded, "It's safe to begin now."

"Sensors and cameras are ready," Tammy confirmed. The trio pulled their protective masks back on and waited in near silence as the capacitors built up their charge. Eventually the required energy was stored and the wormhole opened.

Cynthia grinned at the sight of her invention in operation. "It's stable, right?"

"Power draw is good," Trent declared.

Tammy nodded in agreement. "No radiation burst, and radio signal is clear."

"Send the gerbils through." Trent had already retrieved the cage and was soon nudging the creatures through the event horizon.

"Gerbils have arrived," Tammy stated as they dropped into their cage. "Transit was successful and normal."

"Alrighty… now for the big test. Initiating buffer reversal!" Cynthia's finger depressed the Enter key and initiated a few beeps, a brief hum, and a ripple from the event horizons. "Reversal should be complete. I hope. Send through… a pen." She'd been planning to send the probes but in her self-doubt decided that was too expensive a risk.

Tammy snatched up a pen that had been left out on a nearby bench. Before Trent had a chance to realise that it was his, it had been sent into the portal. Moments later it clattered onto the trolley in front of the young man. "Hey, that's mine! I mean, reverse transfer was a complete success."

"It worked? It really worked!" Cynthia was exuberant. Her calculations had supported the plan of reversing the roles of the input and output buffers while the wormhole was active, but there was no way to be absolutely certain it would work as expected until it had actually been done. "This is awesome!"

Trent shrugged. "I still don't see why you can't just send stuff through both ways like we can with radio."

"How many times to I have to explain this, Trent? Radio waves can be safely duplexed because they are simple unidirectional electromagnetic waves. Matter, on the other hand, needs to be stored in a buffer before transfer on the source side and before reintegration on the destination side. Otherwise, attempting to cross the event horizon would be lethal, because it would interrupt blood-flow, nerve firings, and would probably disrupt protein bonds. A buffer cannot simultaneously send and receive two matter streams, or else parts of the departing object would be intermingled with the arriving object. Therefore, matter can only be sent one direction at a time."

The man shook his head. "You're too young to be talking like that."

"Am I hearing age discrimination?" Cynthia's eyes narrowed dangerously.

"No, no, no, I just mean I still find it a bit… unusual? I don't mean there's anything wrong with you being here. Actually it's… amazing. In a good way."

"Good, I was worried I'd need to dig up my old "superlaser" research. Let's try reversing the buffers back to the usual direction." As the young genius began initiating her subroutine, Tammy let out a small relieved sigh. She'd been worried Trent might receive another accidental electric shock but he seemed to have backpedalled fast enough to placate the teen.

After the pen and the probes had been sent back and forth a few times without trouble, the gerbils were sent on a round trip. Tammy was secretly pleased that she got a turn at sending items through the ring, rather than merely watching them arrive and checking her sensor data. When Cynthia was satisfied with the amount of data recorded, she gave the order to shut down the portal manually. Letting it collapse by itself was a good test of theory, but it was important to ensure that it could be shut off forcibly in case something went wrong.

"Is that all for today?" Tammy asked, mentally reviewing the schedule.

"We're done experimenting, but can you check with the courier that the last of those parts will be in soon? I know we'll be occupied with long distance tests next week, but I don't want construction on the metre-sized rings delayed."

"I'll get right on it," the young woman agreed as she removed her protective gear.

"And I'll pack up and start getting one ring crated for transport to the auxiliary site," Trent added. The auxiliary site was a smaller lab on the other side of town, which would allow the portal to be tested over a much greater distance.

"Sounds good," said Cynthia as she began downloading the data from the cameras and sensors to her laptop. "I should get home at a reasonable hour. Maybe even before my parents."

"You'd better," Tammy replied as she gathered her things. "You know how they worry about you when you're here."

Cynthia nodded. "I wish they understood how important this is."

"They know it's important to you."

"No Tammy, I mean it's important to everyone. I don't think they'd let me do this if it wasn't for Aunt Penny."

"A lot of geniuses throughout history…"

"This is the modern world, not history," Cynthia argued.

"It is now, but then it wasn't. It was then, then, and they though it was modern because… great, you've got me all confused."

"Just call the courier company."

"Yeah, I'll do that."

The teen sighed as she packed away her laptop. "I bet my parents wish they'd adopted someone normal."

"You are normal, just way smarter than everyone else," Trent replied diplomatically. "Don't worry, I'm sure your parents are happy with you the way you are."

"My real parents weren't."

"They didn't get to know you," Trent argued. "I'm sure if they knew what they'd lost they would have kept you."

Cynthia gave a dismissive shrug. "If they're even still alive."

"Don't say things like that."

"Sorry, it's hard to be positive when I was abandoned at birth and no one understands most of what I say."

Trent rolled his eyes. "I understand some of it. I understand what you're saying now, for instance."

"Yeah, but… none of my family do. And… it's hard to make friends my own age when I skipped four grades and most of what they talk about is… lame. Most of society is… pointless."

Trent chuckled. "Everyone thinks that about people they don't understand. But don't worry. Your parents are proud of you, heading towards becoming the top physicist in the world: smarter than Albert Einstein and hotter than Samantha Carter." It was a joke he'd often used.

"Heading towards?" she shot back. It was never clear which person she was referring to when she said that, and Trent never asked.

"I'd better get on with what I'm paid for." He turned back to the task of unplugging the cables of one of the portal rings, or portholes as they had been jokingly named.

Tammy returned from the phone. "The coils should be here in a couple of days, and the new coolant pumps in about five. I better be going: I have a hot date tonight."

"Whatever," Cynthia replied. "I'm heading home. I'll see you both next week." She put her arms through the straps of her laptop bag and picked up her helmet. She always travelled by bike because she was too young to drive and she didn't like busses. Also she enjoyed the exercise. She quickly found her bike from the rack outside the lab complex and unlocked it.

They day was sunny but cool. The wind generated from riding rippled through her long hair, which she'd released from the ponytail she wore it in during lab work. She stopped at a small store to grab a chocolate bar. The cashier automatically asked if she'd had a good day at school and she found herself smiling and nodding rather than bothering to correct the woman. Eating chocolate was a higher priority than explaining that she was smarter than Einstein.

A little further on she passed the blandly named, "Jane's Place" which was owned by a lovely woman named Jane Redburn. Jane taught self defence techniques to women, to help protect them from abuse. Cynthia found it was a good environment to burn some energy, and had also found she often had inspirations while sparring.

After fifteen more minutes of leisurely riding, the teen reached the building she called home. She found a car sitting in the driveway – she'd been beaten home. But not by her parents.

It was a police car.


	5. Abandonment

Chapter 5 - Abandonment

_SGC, four days later…_

Samantha Carter set down a multimeter and picked up the phone. "Carter."

"Is this Samantha Carter?" a woman's voice asked.

"Yes, to whom am I speaking?"

"My name's Anna, I'm with Social Services."

"Um… what can I do for you?"

"I regret to inform you of the deaths of Roland and Jennifer Sanders."

"Um… I'm afraid I don't know who you are talking about."

"That's correct, you don't. They left a daughter and you are her next of kin."

"What?!" Sam's genius mind raced. "She wouldn't happen to be fifteen years old?"

"That is correct. I assume then that you realise…"

"That she's the child I gave up for adoption," Sam completed. There was no point in denying the obvious fact.

"Yes, she is. As her mother, you previously requested custody in the event of the loss of her adoptive parents. Does this still stand?"

"I… uh.. well, yes. What's her name?"

"Cynthia."

That sounded strangely familiar. "Hang on, Cynthia Sanders? That's her name?"

"Yes, why?"

"Oh… just a coincidence. I was reading a physics paper last month by a woman with the same name."

"Mmhmm." Anna didn't sound particularly interested in that. "I recommend you meet with me and her soon. The funeral service for her parents will be held in three days time. It would be appropriate for you to attend."

"Three days… I'll need to arrange that with my CO. Would I be able to bring a partner?"

"That should not be a problem. I'll give you the details and you can call me back."

Sam scribbled down the time and address and Anna's phone number. Anna quickly ended the call and she put down the phone. For a minute she stared at the paper as if it was going to bite her. "Oh… boy," she finally uttered. "When you think you've heard it all."

_In the infirmary…_

Pleasantly, there were few patients in the infirmary, and none of them were in a critical condition. Therefore, Janet Frasier had no urgent business to attend to, though this could change any moment if a team returned from off-world. This is why Sam found her friend sitting in a comfy chair reading a medical journal from last month.

Janet looked up at the sound of approaching footsteps. "Hi, Sam. How's it going?" She realised something was wrong with her friend. "What happened?" she asked with concern.

"It's a girl," said Sam unhelpfully.

"Sorry? I don't understand. How about you pull up a seat and tell me all about it."

Sam nodded and pulled up another chair. "My daughter, her name's Cynthia."

"The one who was adopted," Janet put in.

"Yeah. Her parents died four days ago. The funeral is in three days. The social worker requested that I attend. To meet her."

"How did they die?" Janet automatically focused on the medical issue.

"I don't know. Just that it was an accident. I'll talk the social worker when I call back."

There was a long pause as both women searched for something to say. "You'll need to ask the general to get time off," the medical doctor prompted.

"I'm not sure how to do that," Sam admitted. "The whole situation is awkward. And I'm not sure how I'll handle being a mother and the leader of SG-1."

"Don't worry, you'll be a good mother. I've seen how you are with Cassie."

"They didn't let me keep Cassie."

"They didn't let me keep my own son," Janet said softly.

"What??"

Janet hadn't really thought through the outcome of revealing that. She didn't want to sidetrack the conversation, so she didn't offer an explanation. "Oh… I'll tell you about that some other time."

"You'd better."

Janet remember what she'd intended to say before letting that slip out. "Cassie was a lot younger than your daughter. And an alien. A fifteen-year-old native can handle you being away occasionally," Janet pointed out. "And you'll be married soon, in any case. Don't worry, it'll work out fine."

"But..."

"How about meeting her before you worry about your job," Janet suggested gently.

"Meet her... I still don't know what to tell the general."

"Just tell him what he needs to know to get the time off. He doesn't need to know everything immediately."

"You're right. Thanks, that helps a lot." In fact, Sam could have worked that out for herself, but she needed to talk with a close friend - another woman - first. "And... I also need to tell Pete."

"Pete." Janet couldn't help but say the name with a negative tone. This was not surprising, given the circumstances under which she met him.

"I want him to come with me," Sam added.

Janet plainly stated, "then you'd better tell him everything."

The astrophysicist looked uncomfortable. "I'm not sure if he'd handle me having my own kid."

Janet shrugged. "His loss. If he doesn't want her, you don't want him."

She was answered with a nod. "You're right. I'll go talk to the general."

"Good luck, Sam."

"Thanks, I'll need it."

_In a comfy chair..._

Jack O'Neill - that's two l's – was currently occupied with writing a memo to the Tok'ra. He was trying to explain why one of their operatives had been killed by poison manufactured on earth sent through Earth's stargate in Earth's missiles from a ship that had been left in orbit around Earth. The situation was rather messy and he'd been putting it off for weeks. Fortunately the Tok'ra hadn't started demanding answers yet. They'd been quiet lately.

The general was pleased to be interrupted by a knock on his office door. "Enter," he called cheerfully. A detectably troubled Sam walked in. "Carter, what brings you to my office?"

"I… I need to request a week's leave. To attend a funeral. Sir," she informed him haltingly.

"A funeral, Carter?"

"Yes sir, a funeral. A couple I don't really know died recently and I need to be there."

A quizzical look crossed the general's face. "You don't really know them? What, is one of them an astrophysicist or somesuch?" He figured there must be an academic connection if there wasn't a personal one.

"No, they left me their daughter. She's fifteen, Sir."

Jack blinked. "That's… nice. What's she like?"

"I have no idea Sir. That's what I'm going to find out."

"Then take two weeks. You're owed plenty of downtime. There's no need to rush things. You could do with a break after that 'dancing for your life' thing yesterday on P8X something. What did Daniel call that ritual? Camel Zone something?"

"Cal-nep-zo, the dance of worth, to determine our value as allies, Sir."

"Yes, that. One of the missions that makes me glad I'm a general."

Sam couldn't help a grin at Jack's statement. "It was fun, Sir, just tiring."

"And hard on the knees fersure. Now, I recommend you get off the base, away from your doohickies, and keep out of trouble."

"Yes Sir. And Sir? Can you keep the funeral bit to yourself for now?"

"Of course, Carter. So long as we all get to meet her at some point."

"All?"

"You know, the team." It seemed wrong to say 'Me and SG-1', as in his heart he'd always be a part of the team.

"You have my word, Sir." Jack smiled and waved her out of the room. That went better than she expected, but next she had to face her fiancé, Pete.

_That evening..._

Pete Shanahan arrived at Lt. Col. Carter's house, wondering what she had to tell him. He knocked and the door opened to a beautiful sight. "Whoa, looking good, Samantha," the cop complimented, eyeing his future wife's new dress.

"You too, Pete. I've got good news."

"Yeah? Don't tell me... you've got two months off work."

"Two weeks," Sam corrected, smiling at his enthusiasm."

"Close. What's the occasion?"

"Occasion?"

"Sam, I know you wouldn't give up playing in the 'magic mountain' without a reason. Spill it."

"Is this one of your advanced interrogation techniques?" Sam asked jestingly.

"Something like that."

Sam took a deep breath. "I need to go to a funeral. To meet a fifteen year old girl I'm receiving custody of. And I'd like you to come with me."

Pete was lucky his mouth was empty. "Wha… Did you just say you want custody of a fifteen year old girl? This is a joke, right?"

"No Pete, this is as serious as… as the Goa'uld."

"Oh. And… you didn't think to mention this to me sooner?"

"I only found out today. It's not like I could predict her parents' death – I don't even know them!"

"I'm not following this. You're getting custody why?"

"She… she was adopted at birth." Sam swallowed nervously. "She's actually… she's actually… mine," she finished in a tiny voice.

"Yours. You have… a daughter?" Pete was incredulous.

"Yes Pete, I have a daughter," Sam confirmed more confidently. "Her name is Cynthia."

"I don't care what her name is, why didn't you tell me you had a daughter?"

"I didn't know she was a daughter until today. I gave her away at birth. I didn't expect her parents to die. But they have, so I'm taking responsibility of my child."

"Can't you just let her be adopted again?" Pete asked, looking for a solution.

"No! I've abandoned her once, I can't do it again. I'm not making someone else suffer to cover up my mistakes again."

"Suffer? What about me? There's no way I'm supporting _your_ kid. You're suppose to have _my_ babies, not some illegitimate teenager," the cop protested.

"How can you say such a thing? You haven't even met her yet!"

"So? She's someone else's kid. And who _is_ her father, I'd like to know."

"I… well…" Sam looked at the floor.

"You… I don't believe this! Why didn't you tell me the truth about yourself before we got engaged, hmm?"

"I… Stop making a big deal about this, Pete!"

"Okay, okay. Let's just forget the whole thing and… spend a week or so in Hawaii. How does that sound, Baby?"

"Pete! I've got to go to the funeral in three days!" Sam protested.

"No you don't, Samantha. You can just call them up and say you've changed your mind."

"But I haven't!"

"I'm telling you, you'd better."

Sam sighed in resignation. "Are you sure? You don't want to have anything to do with my daughter?"

"That's right, you've got it now." The man nodded, glad she finally understood.

Sam clasped her hands behind her back. "So we'll forget the whole thing?"

"Yep, let's forget the entire thing," Pete agreed with a grin.

"Fine." She brought her hands forward and pressed her engagement ring into his hand. "Consider it forgotten."

"B-b-b-wha?" Pete spluttered. "I thought you meant…"

"You thought wrong, mister. If you can't accept my daughter, you don't deserve me either."

"But you don't even know her!"

"That doesn't matter. Now get out before I get mad."

"We're good together!"

"Sorry, but it has to be this way. Now leave! And don't think of coming back."

"Okay, alright, I'm going," Pete said, retreating. "I'll call you when you've calmed down."

"Don't bother."

"You'll change your mind!" was Pete's parting shot as he backed out the door. It slammed behind him. He shrugged and walked to his car, planning how to get back on her good side.

Samantha immediately locked the door and ran for her bedroom, where she flung herself on the bed and wept.

AN: Longest chapter yet (not that it was planned that way)!!!  
Many thanks to all my reviewers and alert requesters. It's great to know I'm bringing enjoyment and entertainment to people.


	6. Arrangements

Chapter 6 - Arrangements

Sam felt much better when she awoke the next morning. Not that she was untroubled. There was still a part of her that felt the loss of her relationship with Pete, and of course a part that worried about her imminent meeting with her daughter. But there was also the part that was glad to be rid of Pete after his attitude toward the girl known as Cynthia, and the part hidden away which admitted that the whole relationship with Pete had been a bad idea from the start. In any case, she felt a lot better after a good night's sleep in her own bed – rather than military quarters in the mountain, an infirmary bed, or whatever was offered on some other planet which had it's own time zone.

Choosing to take a long hot shower, she brushed the issues from the past aside and focussed on planning the next few days. There was no way she was going to meet her daughter for the first time alone. She knew she wouldn't be able to handle it without friendly company, and knew that there were several people who would jump at the chance to help.

Teal'c was obviously out, as he wouldn't make the right sort of impression, even though the Jaffa was as honourable as they came. Daniel was another good brotherly protector – she happened to remember that she'd need to tell her own brother about the situation… and Dad! Now there was a can of worms best opened later. Where was she? Oh, Daniel. As good a supporter that he was, showing up with him would give people the wrong idea, plus it didn't seem right to her given the developing closer relationship he had with Janet. And Janet herself was occupied on base, not having the downtime with which SG-1 had been blessed.

And then there was the only logical choice. The right choice, not that she wanted to admit it. But no matter how long she thought about it (while her hair dried) she couldn't deny that it was the only fair thing to do.

As she'd slept late, he would already be at the base, so she called his office. He picked up immediately, as he had caller ID. "Morning, Carter."

"Sir."

"How goes the time off?"

"That's what I'm calling about, Sir. I don't mean to impose, but…"

"No imposition, Carter."

"Would you mind accompanying me to the funeral? I could do with some company, and Pete… isn't interested."

"A funeral, Carter? I can free up the time to accompany you to a funeral. I'll really liven the place up. Should I bring cake?"

Sam stifled a giggle. "No, Sir. And thank you. This is important to me, Sir."

"Give me the time and place and I'll arrange us a flight."

"_A_ flight?"

"Well, we don't know when we're coming back, do we?"

That was a good point. "I guess not Sir." After passing along the pertinent information, she attempted to call Janet. Unfortunately, business in the infirmary had heated up, so all she got was voicemail.

As the recorded message informed her that her friend was unavailable, Sam decided she might as well leave a message. "Hi Janet, it's Sam. I broke up with Pete last night, over Cynthia. General O'Neill has agreed to take me to the funeral. Oh, and it was a traffic accident. A semitrailer went out of control on the freeway. I'm going shopping – you can catch me on my cell. Bye."

Having got the difficult calls out of the way, Sam prepared herself for her next mission: finding a new outfit to wear to the funeral. She expected Jack to wear his dress blues, but as a mother, uniform would not be appropriate for her.

_That afternoon..._

Sam stepped back into her home laden with bags. She'd spent far more than she'd intended, but it had been fun to have a day to herself with no expectations from anyone else. And that bike helmet she'd found looked so much better than her old one.

Rather than debate the wisdom of entering the electronics store – another part of her next credit card bill – she chose to check her answering machine. There were several messages, mostly from Pete. These she deleted after listening to the first two. He sounded apologetic, but she decided to stick with her decision to ditch him and deal with him after adjusting to the Cynthia situation. Janet of course had called her cell, and they'd had a brief conversation, so there were no messages from her. One of the other messages was a shopping habit survey which she ignored, and the remaining one – though not the last – was from Jack.

"Hi Carter, I've taken care of the details of our trip. Perhaps I can drop in to discuss it, or I can just email it to you, if the email thing is working. Enjoy your time off, and take care."

She immediately dialled back. "Carter, how's it going?" he answered.

"Good, Sir. I've been shopping," she replied, her smile obvious even through the phone. "How about you?"

"I've been signing requisition forms. I'm almost done," Jack answered proudly.

"Wow, you _have_ been busy," she teased. "I can stick something from the freezer in the oven and find some salad, if you bring a couple of beers. Sir."

"A couple?"

"You have work tomorrow, and you need to drive home, Sir," Sam pointed out.

"How does 1830 sound?"

"1830 will be fine, Sir.

"See you then." Jack put down the phone down, feeling strange for not saying something like "O'Neill out," as he would on a radio. Old habits die hard, as they say.

_1830... (no, not the year)_

Sam had succeeded in digging up some frozen fish and chips and scraping together a salad. It was nothing fancy, but it was easy. After all, the meal was only an excuse to talk to General O'Neil – or rather, to Jack. She'd finished clearing away the last of the carrot peelings when she recognised the sound of his car arriving.

She walked to the door – resisting the urge to run – and looked outside. "Wow, you actually followed orders," she joked, seeing that he held a bottle of beer in each hand.

"I figured we'll get our itinerary details straight if we stay sober," he offered as an explanation. She laughed and ushered him inside. "I haven't been in here for a while," he noted sadly. He didn't have as much time to spend with his friends now that he was a general.

"Cheer up, Sir, I have cake."

"Excellent! But since we're off duty, you can call me Jack."

"Sorry Sir."

"You're not sorry, Carter."

"No, Sir." She let out a small giggle and received a reproachful look. "You really shouldn't suggest that if you can't stop calling me by my surname."

"I'm perfectly capable of calling you 'Sam', Carter," he answered cheekily.

"I beg to differ. Jack." She picked up an oven glove to take out the tray of food she'd been keeping warm while she had been preparing the salad.

Jack noticed something different about her hand. "So, Sam, how's Pete?"

"He's… apologetic."

"What did he do to you?" Jack asked with forceful concern.

"He couldn't handle the news of Cynthia. The girl I plan to take in. It messed up his picture of the perfect little family." She pulled off the apron she'd worn over a plain sweater and jeans.

"Did he hurt you?"

"He was just a bit… tactless. I told him if he didn't want to take my daughter, he couldn't have me either," Sam explained as she shared the food between two plates.

"Fair enough." Jack looked thoughtful. "You've never met her and you already think of her as a daughter?"

Sam set the plates on the table and motioned for him to sit before she continued. "Actually, she _is_ my daughter. She was adopted at birth because I couldn't care for her. Well, that's what I kept telling myself."

"You, Carter, have a daughter?"

"Yes, Jack. I have a daughter."

"And you've never met her."

"Never," Sam confirmed.

Jack nodded slowly. "I can see why you don't want to handle this alone."

"Thanks for understanding, Sir. Jack."

"Please don't start calling me Sir Jack," he put in, with an eyebrow movement reminiscent of Teal'c. He could tell that Sam needed a moment of humour.

"Oh, no, I'd only do that if you somehow got knighted."

"It could happen. On another planet, perhaps. I take it that you feel like you've abandoned your daughter?"

Sam nodded. "It was selfish, really. I didn't want to let motherhood get in the way of my career. I told myself it would be best for my kid – I didn't find out I had a girl until yesterday – to grow up with a mother and a father. But now that they're gone, I feel like I let her down." She opened her beer and took a large sip. Jack had already started his, to go with the chips.

"I can't judge you – I'm the last person who has a right to – but I can say that you're doing the right thing taking her back. I'm assuming her father doesn't know?"

Sam shook her head. "He has no idea. It was just a one night thing. But I think I should tell him, even after all these years. Is that a good idea?"

"Only if you think he's a decent guy. I could do if for you if you're worried," Jack offered.

"That won't be necessary, Sir." She took another gulp of the beer and put down the bottle. "I met a guy – quite a bit older than me – outside a bar in Princeton. He was. He had beautiful brown eyes. I was instantly smitten. I told him my name was Mandy."

Jack dropped his beer, and then caught it as it began to fall off the table. "Mandy?!"

"Hi." It was a small word, spoken shyly, but it carried great meaning.

The general finished his beer. "Can you go over that again? I just want to make sure I have the startling conclusion straight."

The doctor of astrophysics nodded. "We have a fifteen year old daughter."

Yep, it was exactly what he'd thought. "Thanks." He had said little, but Sam knew that his mind was racing. When it slowed down, he would speak again. In the meantime, she munched on some lettuce and observed his expression. Finally he asked, "How long have you known? That it was me?"

Sam turned somewhat pink. "The briefing room, before the return to Abydos. But I suspected when I saw the thumbnail picture with your report on the original mission. I decided it would be inappropriate to mention it, and it was impossible to test."

Jack nodded. "It could have caused problems for SG-1, and Kinsey would have been all over us. As for what to do now… how about we start by meeting her and see how things go from there. We have a whole week with her, if it's necessary."

"That sounds reasonable, Sir. I mean, Jack. How about that cake?"

"And I know you have some Simpsons DVDs hidden away somewhere."

"I admit to nothing. If you find them, I'll blame Teal'c."

"You do have some? Sweet!" And all was right with the world. Little else was said about 'the situation' but both parties evidently felt that it would be best to let it settle in before further discussion.

AN: Well, now he knows! I'd considered Sam delaying telling all until they were on the plane, but she wouldn't put it off that long. Thanks again for the reviews (they help keep my in line) and "G'day" to all the new readers.  
The chapters keep getting longer... and I almost added more to this one. edit: typo fixed!


	7. Two Blondes Walk into a Funeral

Chapter 7 – Two blondes walk into a funeral

_On the morning of the funeral date…_

"Whatcha thinking?"

"Hmm?" Sam looked around and remembered she was sitting in an aircraft beside her C.O. "Oh, I was thinking about Pete. He showed up with flowers yesterday."

"Really? That's decent of him."

Sam nodded. "He apologised for flying off the handle and said he was willing to meet Cynthia. I thanked him but told him it wasn't enough to make up for the way he acted."

"I take it he didn't simply leave it at that?" Jack suspected.

"No, he asked me out to dinner. I said it wasn't going to work out between us. He looked hurt, but he was smart enough not to push it, so he wished me good luck and left."

"You weren't really happy with him, were you?" Jack said insightfully.

Sam responded with a small nod. "I thought I was but… It's not that I was _un_happy, just not the happiest I could be. He was a great guy, just not the best." She wanted to say exactly who the best was, but regulations prevented her. Even inviting him to her house alone had been risky. For the same reason, it was very difficult to talk about…

"What do you think she'll be like, Carter?"

"Who? Oh, Cynthia." She wanted to say 'our daughter'.

"If she's lucky, she'll get your brains _and_ looks."

"Sir, she'd be fine with yours. In fact, if she got both our brains... perhaps she did," Sam realised.

"Oh?"

"I read an article by a Cynthia Sanders on the feasibility of artificial stable wormholes. It actually had practical potential. I wrote the name off as a coincidence, but now that I think about it…"

"Anyone who'd write something like that has _got_ to be your daughter. No one else could be smart enough."

"Thank you Sir, but I'm sure it's not all from me."

"Daniel would have far smarter kids than me," Jack argued.

"Perhaps, but they'd have as many resurrections as birthdays," Sam joked. "Though I did consider bringing him along."

"Yet you didn't."

"No, I was worried that Cynthia might think he was her potential stepfather, and he doesn't need that embarrassment. After all, I did ask Anna – the social worker – if I could bring a 'partner' along, and that can be interpreted to mean many different things."

"That it can. It's still going to be awkward though."

She nodded. "It's going to be hard to explain that we're her parents and we work together but we aren't a couple and aren't allowed to be because we work together."

"Or you could just say that."

"It sounds weird."

Jack shrugged. "You should have brought Teal'c along. He can really say things as they are, and everyone will be too intimidated to argue."

"Actually, I left him out of this to avoid intimidating anyone. Not that I have anything against Teal'c, but I don't want to scare anyone away either."

"Yes, that can wait until she's got to know you." There was a calm silence as the pair concentrated on their own thoughts. Jack finally spoke up. "Carter, I owe you an apology. This whole mess is my fault."

"What do you mean your fault? Oh… no, it was as much my fault as yours, and you weren't quite sober at the time."

"I was married for crying out loud! I should never have even looked at you!"

"And I should… Hang on… I don't remember you wearing a ring," she puzzled.

Jack thought back to that day and remembered the circumstances. "Black-ops."

"Oh. Then why were you drinking during a mission?"

The answer was short and simple. "Classified. Actually, you provided excellent cover, though I wasn't thinking of that at the time."

"I should hope not!" Sam found herself saying. "I mean…"

"It's okay, Carter. No woman would want to be thought of as 'cover'."

"Your cover can't have been that good: I recognised you easily enough."

"It wasn't that kind of cover. It was… behavioural cover. And besides, I said to call me Jack. Where'd you get 'Mandy' from?"

Sam shrugged. "It was a spur of the moment thing. I think it's because my name has 'M' in it. I didn't want to use my name or someone I knew might have found out."

"I guess that backfired."

"Not so much. None of my family know. Yet."

Jack gave a mock groan. "I'm not looking forward to that."

"Me neither… and you'd better not tell anyone how I was dressed that day." That was half the reason for the fake name, she remembered.

"How you were dressed?" The general replayed the fuzzy memories. "Oh! No wonder I didn't recognise you. And… the dozens of tiny pigtails…"

"Tell a soul and you're asking for a world of hurt. Sir."

"Don't worry, my lips are sealed, Rainbow-head." He received an elbow in the ribs, in addition to a giggle.

"I mean it!" At least there had been no photos, or she'd never live it down. She still couldn't figure out what – besides sheer boredom – had possessed her to do such a thing to her hair.

Jack moved the conversation back to serious ground. "At least Sara already knows. Though when she eventually hears it was you, well, I deserved her fury the first time, but I don't want to go through it again."

"She found out?"

"I told her as soon as I was able. Keeping secrets about my job is one thing – though it certainly caused a lot of trouble – but something like that, it's a bad idea. The guilt would be destroying, and it would be so much worse when she eventually found out. No, best to admit to it immediately."

Sam nodded silent agreement. "I'm sorry. If I'd known…"

"Not your fault, Carter."

She spent a few minutes looking out the window, watching the continent pass by below. An important question came to her. "What do you think of being a father again?"

"It's terrifying, Sam. Even more than the first time," he admitted.

"Because of Charlie?"

"Partly." He didn't elaborate. Sam waited, and he eventually admitted, "And because she's yours."

"I… trust you'll look after her, Jack. And I'm scared too."

"I also feel like I have a second chance," Jack added, more positively.

"Me too. I let her go once, but now I have her back. I just hope she accept me. Us."

Jack nodded gravely.

_Later, at the front of a poorly-lit church…_

Cynthia Sanders sat beside her aunt, Penny Sanders. Aunt Penny, a close 'ally', had taken care of her since the accident that had tragically ended the lives of her adoptive parents. While the dark-haired woman was no blood relation to Cynthia, she seemed to care a great deal for the girl and had been instrumental in finding the funding for her research and talking her parents into allowing her to actually do it.

Behind the girl, many friends and acquaintances and fewer relatives of her parents were seated. Tammy Marlow, her faithful lab assistant, sat to her right. Trent had been unable to attend. The social worker, Anna Blesroe, sat a few seats away. Before her, a minister droned on about how Roland and Jen had gone to a better place. She didn't pay much attention, not caring much for faith in the invisible. If her own mother didn't care about her, then why should some 'creator' of everything care about anyone? She didn't see the point, and pleasantly Aunt Penny didn't either.

Eventually the man ran out of blessings, and it was time for the family members to speak. Her adoptive father's parents each said various nice things about their son and how proud they were of him and his wife and how the world was worse off without them. Her uncle, Paulie Shore, was next. He was a short enthusiastic man who lived on the other side of the country, so she didn't see him often. It was difficult to watch the usually happy man so close to tears. After him was Aunt Penny.

"I'll always remember my brother as a decent man who always tried to do what was best for those around him. We often disagreed, but he was a wonderful big brother, and it's awful to lose him. I'll never forget the way we'd laugh together at the oddest things. Jen was a lovely soul, so full of life, and it seems wrong for that to be extinguished. I'll always miss our little chats and her cooking, which she used to bless so many people.

"They were also wonderful parents, taking in Cynthia and treating her as their own. I know Rol didn't always understand her, but I can say that he was always proud of her and cherished her. The world is indebted to them for the effort they put into bringing her up right. I'm sure no one feels their loss more keenly than she.

"Roland and Jennifer should be an inspiration to us all, and an example of the potential of the human race. I'll never forget them." Her voice wavered towards the end, and as she returned to her seat she buried her face in a large handkerchief.

Towards the back, the two AF officers listened carefully to every word for information that would lead to a better understanding of their daughter and her adoptive family. As they were considering her aunt's words, the teen herself stood to speak. She was dressed in a long black coat – which would have been thought of as a lab coat if it had been white – and wore black ribbons that contrasted with her hair.

"She's… beautiful," Sam whispered almost silently.

"And so tall. Are you sure she's only fifteen?"

There was no time for further whispers, so they listened to their little girl speak for the first time. "I'm here today to give my respect to the lives of Jennifer and Roland Sanders, my parents. While they didn't bring me into the world, they did welcome me into it, and for that I will be forever grateful. They provided me with a safe and – and loving home and made me feel like I was someone special. It's hard to – hard to believe they're… gone. I'll always miss their reminders that I have great potential, their worries and warnings when I tried to use that great potential – particularly if it was electrical – and their joy when I achieved something without burning anything.

"I'll admit that they rarely understood, but they always – they always cared. And that's what really… mattered to me. Not a day will go by that I won't wish they were still here to give me advice or – or a smile or – or a…" She stopped to dab at her eyes and take a few deep breaths. She looked so vulnerable as she stood there, speaking about her loss. "I'd give almost anything for – for one last hug," she eventually managed to say. "And I know they were far more than just my parents. Their many friends and relations have each lost a small part of their lives. They always put in their best efforts to help those around them, so we should honour them by always focusing on the happy times we shared, and making more of our own."

She had been straining for the strength to keep talking, and now reached her limit. Limply she returned to her seat. Aunt Penny met her halfway and helped her along with a half-hug. Sam – along with many of the attendees – cried softly into her hands and Jack rested a comforting hand on her shoulder, his own eyes moist. Sam's tears were more bitter for seeing firsthand how she'd abandoned her child.

A few more relatives and close friends of the deceased couple spoke, but it passed in a non-distinct blur. Finally the minister said a few words in closing and a hymn was sung softly by those who could hold back the tears long enough. When it was over, people began to stand and talk quietly among themselves, sharing personal thoughts and stories.

Miss Blesroe had spotted the blonde woman and uniformed man at the back, so she left Cynthia with her aunt and Tammy and joined them. "I'm Anna Blesroe," she introduced. "Samantha Carter?"

"That's right. You can call me Sam."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Sam. And this is…?"

"My commanding officer, General Jack O'Neill."

"Oh, yes, you're in the Air Force," Anna replied to Sam, remembering. "And you're a scientist too, correct?"

Sam nodded. "PhD in astrophysics."

"Cynthia's really into that stuff," Anna pointed out.

"Yes, I read one of her papers. Very impressive. So, um…"

"You said the general is…"

"Jack."

"Jack's your commanding officer?" The social worker was obviously wondering why he was present and what their relationship was.

"Yes, and he's a good friend. We've worked together for about seven years. We also happened to meet once sixteen years ago… resulting in Cynthia."

"I… see. What does the Air Force think of this?"

"I only found out myself two days ago," Jack answered. "But frankly, our past is none of their business."

"True, but what about the present situation?"

"They won't have a problem with us spending time with out daughter." Jack of course knew that spending time with their daughter together would likely be frowned upon.

"Good to hear. May I ask what your duties as a general are, Jack?"

"I command a deep space radar facility under Cheyenne Mountain, and Carter here performs analysis of deep space radar telemetry."

Anna nodded knowingly. The committee who'd devised that cover story had a lot to answer for. But she knew that whatever they did, she wouldn't find out. However, since it was based in a mountain in Colorado Springs, it couldn't be too dangerous. "I take it you'll be wanting to share custody?"

"Yes, we both want a part in our daughter's life, and between the two of us we'll be able to give her plenty of time," Sam answered. "There's a good school not far from the mountain… which reminds me: what grade is she in?"

"Well actually, she graduated from high school last year. Quite the genius. Actually she's working on her own research project which is likely to earn her a PhD, if not a Nobel Prize."

"I'm not surprised," Jack responded. "Carter has a legacy of grade-skipping… though not quite to that extent. And she was working on her PhD throughout the pregnancy."

"Is that why you gave her away?" Anna wondered.

Sam nodded guiltily. "Something I regret, now more than ever."

"I should point out that Cynthia is likely to want to stay with her aunt," Anna warned. "She's been living with her the past few days, and they were always close. To her, you're strangers."

"I understand," Sam answered. "We have a whole week to get to know her."

"That's good. Your scientific background may help some. Penny has a bit of background in the sciences, and actually helped her get Project Porthole off the ground."

"Porthole?" Jack echoed. "I hope that has nothing to do with apples."

Anna shot him a confused glance and turned to Sam for help. Sam obliged. "I explained the use of the metaphorical term 'wormhole' by representing 3D space as an apple and…"

"Ack! Don't start that again, Carter."

"Sorry Sir."

Anna laughed. "Unfortunately, I think it does. Cynthia told me it's a pun on the word 'portal', and said… what was it? Oh, the wormhole opens a portal between two rings which look a bit like portholes. At least, I think that's what she said, but I wouldn't know if I was wrong."

"I feel your pain," Jack joked.

"I think you're right though," Sam supplied helpfully.

"In any case, here she comes," Anna observed.

The teen in question – having been sufficiently comforted by her aunt and lab assistant – started to wonder where her social worker had vanished to. Looking around, she spotted the woman's ginger hair alongside a man in uniform. She quickly walked up the aisle. "Miss Blesroe, there you are. Oh!" Her attention had been drawn by the blue uniform and she'd looked up to see a familiar face. "Wow, you're Co… no, wait…" she spotted the stars. "General! General Jack O'Neill!" She didn't know why he was at the funeral, but she was excited to meet him.

Jack wasn't sure what to make of this warm welcome. "You know me?"

"Oh, sorry, I'm Cynthia Sanders." She offered her hand and he figured he might as well shake it. "I recognise you from the Wormhole X-treme DVD special features: you were the military advisor to the show!" Behind her, Tammy and Aunt Penny joined the group.

Not exactly what the general had wanted to be known for. "Oh… that. I can't believe people actually paid money for it!"

The girl laughed. "I know! That's what made your segment so funny! Everyone else acted as if they were proud of the show, when it was actually horribly cheesy, inspirational as it was. You actually let on what you thought about it… sarcastically of course. It was a riot!"

"Inspirational?" her parents wondered in unison.

Penny Sanders explained. "She gets all her inspiration from science fiction shows. You should have seen the equations she wrote after seeing Star Wars! And she was at it for days! And then there was Back to the Future… Heaven forbid she ever get her hands on 1.21 gigawatts!"

"Don't be silly, Aunt Penny. I know the dangers of time travel," Cynthia reproached. "Anyhow, Wormhole X-treme lead to the theories that resulted in Project Porthole." She suddenly remembered who she was talking to. "Um, I don't mean to be rude, General, but what brings you here?"

Jack turned to the woman beside him. "Carter?"

Cynthia hadn't really noticed the blonde woman, but now she looked. Another familiar face. "Oh my goodness, Doctor Samantha Carter! I've referenced your papers!"

"Um, hi," Sam answered with a nervous smile. This was becoming more and more awkward.

"You're, like, my… idol!" the teen gushed. "I'd still be stuck in the theoretical phase if it wasn't for your work! Did Aunt Penny invite you?"

"No, no, Anna did. What was that about theoret…"

"Ahem," the redheaded social worker interrupted. "Sam and Jack are here because you are their daughter."

Penny looked defensive.

Tammy bit back a snicker, finding the situation quite funny.

Cynthia gasped. "No way! This is a joke, right? You've gotta be kidding!" It would be too weird if it was actually true.

Tammy rolled her eyes. "Two tall, blonde geniuses and a general walk into a funeral." She received a reproving look from the social worker.

"It's true. I'm… your mother. And I'm really, really sorry for abandoning you. I know I don't deserve it, but I'd like a second chance. Please?"

The teen stared. "You're really my mom?"

"Yes, Cynthia. I'm your mom and I… I gave you away for my career. My dad had to work a lot and didn't have much time for me, and I resented that but… I realise now that I was far, far worse than him. Can you ever forgive me?"

Cynthia shrugged. "I dunno. I guess we'll find out. You can start to make it up to me."

"How?"

The girl stretched out her arms. Sam responded without hesitation, and the mother and daughter shared their first hug.

"I… I've never held you before," Sam cried after they separated. "I'm a horrible mother."

"Hush, Carter, you'll be fine," the voice of her CO encouraged.

Cynthia turned towards the speaker, still close by her newly-discovered mother's side. "What about you?"

"Carter – Sam, that is – told me yesterday. And I'm hungry," he admitted.

His daughter nodded. "Me too! I think there's cake."

AN: oops, I beat my previous chapter by over 1000 words!  
also, one of these days I should mention in my profile that I'm male... a couple of years back someone addressed me as 'lady' in a PM but I still haven't learned that just because there are no female software engineering students at my university, other people might have heard rumours of one existing. (okay, i know there's lots, so please tell Carter NOT to shoot me)  
Further family bonding in the next chapter... and eventually I might get up to the 'havoc' part!

edit note: missed an 's'. much later edit: replaced a 'that' with a 'than'


	8. Discussion and Dinner

Chapter 8 – Discussion and Dinner

"So… my dad's a general," Cynthia opened, having downed some of the cake and juice provided outside. Sam had been separated from them in the crowd and found herself being questioned by some of the senior family members. Fortunately she had Anna to back her up. In any case, it gave the girl a chance to get to know her father a little.

"Apparently so," Jack answered with a friendly smile.

She considered this for a moment. "What is it that you do?"

"Generally?" he asked, extracting a giggle that reminded him so much of Carter's. "Lots of paperwork. Making decisions no one else wants to make, and telling people who should know better what to do. It's tough, but apparently people in high places think I'm capable."

"Sounds difficult."

He nodded. "It's a big responsibility, but someone has to do it. Since it's me, I have the privilege and duty to do all I can to protect this nation and the people who work under me."

"Protect from what, exactly?"

"Well… I'm in charge of deep space telemetry analysis. We watch for things in space, like asteroids, which might endanger Earth." And aliens, and huge honkin' spaceships.

"Oh." She was disappointed that he dealt with nothing more interesting than rocks. "Do you think people will travel further into space some day? To the stars?"

Now there was a loaded question. "With minds like yours and Carter's working on it, I don't see why not."

"I agree. Why don't you call my mother by her first name?" Cynthia wondered.

"Habit. It's a military thing, and she was my 2IC for several years. We're not supposed to use first names because it's too personal. So after working together for so long I always think of her as 'Carter'," he explained.

"Too personal?"

"Relationships are discouraged in a chain of command. Things like that can cloud judgement, especially when you're making decisions that will result in people dying. So there's rules to prevent that from happening. At least that's how it's supposed to work. After working closely with the same people for several years, there are strong bonds between us. Some people would think that's a bad thing."

"And you think?"

"Teams work best when every member really knows and trusts all the others."

"Why doesn't it say 'General' on your uniform?" the teen wondered, thinking of a line 'Colonel Danning' had often used.

"Doesn't need to. You knew I was a general from the stars, and anybody else who needs to know can tell the same way."

"So why does Colonel Danning say…"

"Uh! Don't mention that show. It makes my head spin." There were enough wormholes in his life without adding garishly coloured ones, and that Danning character… well it wasn't intended as an insult, but it certainly wasn't flattering.

"Okay… what about the Simpsons?" The conversation immediately improved.

On the other side of the lawn, Samantha Carter found herself faced with her daughter's Aunt Penny, who was acting as Anna had warned. "You can't just waltz in here and take my niece away."

"I'm not taking her now," Sam assured. "That wouldn't be fair to anyone. We're staying in town for a few days, to let her adjust first."

"But she has her research! She won't want to just abandon it," Penny protested.

"She won't be abandoning it. I'm sure it can be moved. I assure you, I'm quite capable in that regard."

"But it's fragile! And then there's her funding."

"I've moved a lot of fragile equipment in my years. And I'm sure her sponsors wouldn't mind if she operated at a different site. If it really came down to it, I'm sure the Air Force could pick up her project. I could even get her a lab on my base if she wanted."

"You're with the Air Force too?" Obviously the woman didn't know as much about Sam as Cynthia did.

"Yes. I'm Lieutenant Colonel Doctor Samantha Carter," Sam answered proudly.

"Oh. Well… it's up to Cynthia, not me, so you'll have to discuss it with her."

"I intend to. But perhaps you could tell me a bit about this 'Project Porthole'?"

"Not really. I did help her find the funding and convince her parents to let her do it, but you'll need to talk to her for any details."

Sam was a little surprised that the woman didn't know much about it. "Oh well. It was nice talking with you. I'm joining the general over that way, but first I'd like to thank you for all the help you've given Cynthia."

The woman smiled. "It was my pleasure."

"Actually, I'd like to ask her to join me and her father for dinner tonight, if that's alright with you."

"If it's okay with Cynthia and Anna, it's fine by me. Do you have anywhere in mind?"

Sam shook her head. "Could you suggest any family restaurants she might enjoy?"

"Just a second… do you have any paper?" Between them they found a napkin and a pen, and soon Sam had a list of some possible addresses, as well as Penny's address and phone numbers.

"Thanks again, Penny," said Sam as the left to see what Jack had been telling her daughter.

"You're welcome, Sam. I'll see you when you come to pick her up."

"Will do."

"Ahh, Carter, we were just talking about you," Jack welcomed when she approached.

"You really asked him to arm wrestle?" her daughter added.

"You told her about that?" Sam was a little embarrassed.

Jack shrugged. "She has a right to know a bit about our history."

"But that bit?"

"It's part of our first real meeting," he rationalised.

Cynthia laughed at the banter. "So, what's going to happen to me?" she asked more seriously.

"You can stay with your aunt tonight, but she's letting us take you out to dinner," informed Sam. "Would you like that?"

"Um… sure. And after that?" Cynthia naturally wanted to know their long-term plans for her.

"We can talk about that over dinner," Jack answered, deciding to leave that discussion for a later time.

"Okay."

Sam opened her mouth to speak but Tammy appeared and beat her to it. "Hey Cynthia, I'm so happy for you! I mean, for finding that Doctor Carter is your mom and all. That must be pretty awesome." She tended to be more upbeat when outside the lab.

"Yeah, I guess it kinda is." In fact, equating 'her mother' with 'Doctor Carter' was not easy and would take some time to get used to. "Uhhm... Mom..." That sounded really weird. "This is Tammy Yates, one of my lab assistants," she introduced.

"Nice to meet you, Tammy. I'm curious about what you two work on. Does it actually relate to wormhole physics?"

"That's what Cynthia tells me. My main field is multimedia – studying part time – but I need extra money for tuition this year and I'm handy enough in the lab."

"I'll tell you about it at dinner. My aunt is waving me over, which means she wants to leave. It was great meeting you... Mom and Dad."

"You too, Cynthia. I just wish..." Sam began.

The teen had heard enough regrets for one day. "Yeah, I know. See you later!"

"Bye Cynthia," said Jack to his daughter. She waved and followed her aunt to her car.

"I'd better be going too. It was great meeting you both, especially you, Doctor Carter. Maybe Cynthia will let me help her show you around her lab some time."

"Perhaps she will," Sam replied as the woman left for her own vehicle.

"That went well," Jack apprised. "She's a great kid. Better than I expected."

"She sure is. I'm not sure if I like her aunt though."

"Well we don't need to like her, we just need Cynthia to accept us," Jack reasoned.

"True. I think it's time we headed back to the hotel and planned the evening. Sir."

"Yes, let's do that."

_Later, at the home of Penny Sanders..._

A car pulled up outside, alerting Aunt Penny to the arrival of the two Air Force officers. She knocked on the door of the spare room, where Cynthia had sequestered herself. Receiving no answer, she opened the door to find the teen huddled over her laptop with headphones clamped over her ears. This was quickly fixed by pulling them off.

"Hey!" Cynthia exclaimed, shocked at the sudden lack of sound.

"You have visitors. Time to go."

"Oh. I just need to compile..."

"Today."

"Yes, just a minute."

"It will be here when you get back."

Unwillingly, Cynthia closed the laptop screen and snatched up her handbag.

"Remember what I warned you."

"Yeah, yeah." Cynthia stood just as the doorbell chimed. "Coming." She quickly made her way to the door where her parents were waiting. "Uh, hi."

"Hi, Cynthia. How does Mexican sound?" Sam asked.

"Fine." She would rather be running simulations but if she had to eat, it would do fine."

"Don't ask Daniel that question, or he'd start speaking one of his languages at us," Jack joked.

"Huh? Who's Daniel?"

"A guy we work with. He knows a lot about rocks, wavy lines, and people who've been dead for a long time."

Seeing that the explanation didn't help much, Sam added, "Doctor Daniel Jackson, archaeologist and linguist." She opened the car door for her daughter, while Jack told Penny where they were going and left her his number in case she needed to contact them.

"Oh. Never heard of him. Is he in the Air Force too?"

"Civilian contractor."

"Does he work on deep space telemetry too?"

"Well... sometimes. We're not allowed to talk about it, sorry. Classified information and all that."

"Asteroids are classified?"

"The satellites for looking at them are."

Cynthia nodded in understanding. "I see. I guess I'd better not ask any more questions about it."

As Jack joined them in the car, Sam complimented, "I like your dress. Where did you get it?" The knee-length dress was black with white patterns of electron orbitals, complimented by a white blouse.

"Thanks. I found it on Ebay."

A few minutes of small-talk later, the trio arrived at the restaurant. After finding a table and ordering, the talk started again. "How many grades did you skip?" Sam wondered.

"Four."

"That's more than Carter skipped. Must have been hard to cope with being younger that all the other students."

Cynthia shrugged. "I didn't really care about their ages."

"But did they?" Sam pressed.

"Some did, but not for long." Whether they stopped for lack of interest, teacher intervention, the direction of other students, or unexplained accidents was not elaborated on. In fact, there was a little of each.

"Do you still talk to friends from school?"

"A couple. I don't have much in common with anyone I knew in my classes, and the few kids my age I knew are still in high school and struggle to understand simple concepts like the curvature of space-time."

"I understand it well enough to stay on the road while driving," Jack commented, eliciting a grin from his daughter. "So… what's this big project you have going? The porthole one?"

"Why do you want to know?" Cynthia asked unexpectedly.

"I figured it was something important to you which you might like to talk about," he replied. "No pressure."

"Well… currently I can open a small wormhole and hold it stable for thirty-eight minutes, and send small items, including small live animals, fifteen metres across a room."

Sam gasped. "You mean you actually have a working… wormhole generator?" She struggled to find a good word for the item.

"Well, two, since you need an origin and a destination to be able to go anywhere."

"That's amazing!"

"Yeah, but it's pretty small. Can't fit an animal larger than a gerbil through. I'll start constructing a larger set of portal rings soon, while we start testing longer distances. Over the last few days I've worked on a better program for selecting the destination and calculating coordinates. My goal is to eventually make a human-sized portal that can be sent via rocket to the Moon or Mars. Though before that they could stick one on the IIS to save on shuttle trips. And they could conceivably be used for international travel, for people with enough spare cash. Unless the technology can be mass produced cheaply, in which case portals could be spread all over the planet. Though I'm pretty certain there would be complications from multiple active wormholes."

"And what complications would those be?" asked Jack, who had barely been following the spiel.

"It's like this – I think: The polarity of the event horizon buffers of wormholes that are in the same vicinity of subspace and running close to parallel would result in attraction or repulsion between their virtual paths, either resulting in additional energy drain to maintain the connection over a longer distance – and possibly velocity and temperature effects on the matter stream – or else it could result in the wormholes combining or swapping destinations in order to take a shorter path. Of course, it's completely theoretical. I have observed the symptoms of incorrect distance calculations – fortunately before live trials, or we would have had gerbil-sicles – but I can't really test the other idea yet since I only have two rings. And I'm not sure if I want to since there's a chance that the disruption will cause a rip in subspace and release a burst of energy into normal space."

"And that would be bad?"

"On the scale I'm working, it would probably destroy my entire lab, and the perimeter. In the case of international travel big enough for humans, it could take out a city… though it's also likely to release the energy under Earth's crust, resulting in tectonic activity and thus overall devastation."

"I'm trusting you to avoid that, young lady."

"Don't worry, I don't want to be remembered as the person who blew up the earth. Not that there would be anyone to remember. Unless we regularly receive deep space telemetry from aliens, she joked.

"No, not regularly," Jack jested in return.

"But seriously, you need to be careful who has access to your research. There are a lot of unscrupulous people out there who would either try to make as much money as possible without caring about the possible consequences, or else use it as a weapon," Sam warned.

Cynthia nodded and leaned in conspiratorially. "Aunt Penny thinks you might have been sent by the Air Force to take over my project."

"Well you can tell her that I didn't even know you were doing practical experiments until today," Sam responded. "And I wouldn't dream of stealing research."

"That's what I tried to tell her, but she doesn't seem to fully trust you. She said that it seems too convenient that my real parents are both in the Air Force and one was close to the show that inspired my research while the other has written papers in the same field."

"And yet she let us take you out," Jack observed.

"Maybe she wants to keep up appearances, so you don't think she suspects," Cynthia guessed. "I dunno."

"Well enough of this technobabble. Have you ever been fishing?"

_Later that evening…_

Cynthia was returned to her aunt's place happy and well fed. While it she couldn't yet fully accept the two people she'd met as her parents, and it was strange to call them such, they were certainly fun people to be around. She knew she would enjoy this week, at the least. Moving away to live with them was something she'd need to think about. If nothing else, Jack's sense of humour would help a little with the pain of losing the people who'd been her parents for fifteen years.

"How did it go?" Aunt Penny inquired, looking up from the TV.

"I had fun. They're nice people. And our waiter could see the resemblance."

"Hmph, I'll hold off judgement until I see a DNA test. And even if they really are your parents, who's to say that they don't have another agenda?"

"They didn't even know about Project Porthole until I told them about it. And Sam – Mom – warned me about people who might use it recklessly or as a weapon."

"That says nothing about her own intentions."

"Don't worry so much. I'm going to bed. We're going to a dog show in the morning. You know, I've never been to a dog show."

Aunt Penny glanced at the clock. "It's not particularly late yet, so I don't mind if you do a little more work on that program of yours before you go to sleep. You don't want to fall behind schedule."

"Of course not. Goodnight."

"Goodnight." The woman turned back to the show she'd been watching.

After an hour and a half, Cynthia had patched the main bugs her new program had been suffering from, and was happy enough with her progress to call it a night. It should be finished in only a few more hours, but for now she needed some sleep. She was actually looking forward to spending a day out with Jack and Sam.

However, it never happened.


	9. Betrayal

Chapter 9 - Betrayal

Jack and Sam arrived at Penny Sanders' home at 0830 the next morning. Penny came to the door and let them inside. "Take a seat, I'll see if I can drag Cynthia from her room." She headed down the hall to the spare room and they seated themselves on the couch. She was back half a minute later. "Sorry, she's not in her room."

"She isn't? Then were is she?" Sam demanded.

"Perhaps she took a ride on her bike. She sometimes takes morning rides. There wasn't a note in her room, but I can check the garage."

"Sure. I'll come with you," Jack replied, leaving no room for argument.

"What about her cell-phone?" Sam asked.

"It's in her room. Actually, it was under her bed, so maybe she forgot it."

"Do you mind if I look around?"

"Go ahead, it beats waiting. Second door on the left." She pointed towards the hallway and then headed for the garage, Jack following. They met back in the lounge room a few minutes later.

"Her bike's gone," Jack informed Sam. "But no note."

"She took her laptop too," Sam revealed.

Penny nodded. "Perhaps she's gone to the lab to try out an idea or make a modification. She does that sometimes, though I wish she had told me first."

"Is there a number for the lab we can call?" Sam asked.

"There is, but it's in a separate room. If she's working alone in the lab she'll have music on, so she won't hear it. I've tried before."

"Then we'd better look there ourselves," Jack decided.

Penny wrote out the address. "I'd come with you, but I should stay here in case she returns."

"Right. We'll call you when we find her, or if we don't," Sam promised. The pair returned to their vehicle, hoping to find their daughter safe and ready for their outing.

They didn't. In fact, they didn't find anything. A friendly security guard escorted them into the building (after being shown their military IDs) and they were greeted by a bare room.

"Are you sure this is the right room?" Jack questioned.

"Positive. I heard they were moving one part of their apparatus to another site soon, but this place should not be empty."

"Cynthia's definitely not here," Sam reported. "And the doorhandles were clean of prints."

"Then there's been a theft. And possibly a kidnapping," Jack declared. "You need to report it and I need to know who'd had access to this lab."

"Well, apart from Miss Sanders and her two assistants, there's Professor Zach Nolin who has been checking on the project's progress for the university, the Velocindustry people, and the security staff. Prof Nolin been out of town for the past three days, and won't be back for two more."

"Velocindustry? Who are they?" Sam asked.

"The technology company who are a major sponsor of the project," the guard informed. "They have a few people we escort in occasionally, and of course Penny has a key."

Jack and Sam glanced at each other knowingly. "You mean 'Aunt Penny'?" Jack clarified.

"That's right. Cynthia's lucky to have an aunt working for a company like Velocindustry. It made finding funding much easier."

"She told us she didn't know any of the details of the project," Sam revealed.

The guard – Rick according to his tag – shook his head. "There's no way that's true. She comes in to check on progress every couple of weeks."

"And she told Cynthia she thought _we_ were trying to steal the project from her," Jack added.

"She's in on Cynthia's disappearance! We need to confront her," Sam said, more than a little angry.

Jack shook his head. "She's probably split by now. Sent us out of the way so she could escape."

Sam nodded. "No wonder see seemed unconcerned. That was all a story to make us think Cynthia had left willingly. Sending us running in circles has given whoever took her more time to cover their tracks."

"Exactly." He turned to the guard. "Rick, if you'll excuse us, we need to speak in private. I suggest you get the cops here and tell them what we told you, but I'm afraid we can't stick around." From his tone, it was obviously an order.

"Uh, yes sir, I'll do that."

Sam followed Jack back to their car. "I can't believe I didn't suspect something was up sooner, Sir. I mean, I didn't trust her, but I didn't do anything about it either, and now we've lost her."

Jack started driving to reduce the chance of eavesdropping. "Don't worry, Carter. I didn't trust her either, which is why I put a tracking device on her car while I was in the garage. Just in case we wanted to find her later."

Sam looked more than a little relieved. "That's great, Sir! Prometheus can pinpoint her location exactly. I'll call the SGC and get the data we need."

"You do that, Carter."

She did, and within minutes she had a destination. The car had pulled off a highway about half an hour's drive out of the city. It was presently not moving and there were no other vehicles stopped nearby. After a short drive they pulled off the highway behind the car Jack had seen in the garage earlier.

Sam checked in the car and found it empty. Jack checked around the other side of the car, and found Penny. "She's dead, Carter."

"Sir?" She joined the general and found the woman lying dead on the ground, shot in the chest. "Oh no!"

"I have a bad feeling about this, Carter." He pointed at some marks on her arms. "What does that look like to you?"

_Earlier that day__…_

Cynthia woke up from a drugged sleep in unfamiliar surroundings. Feeling panicked, she sat up suddenly. "Wha?"

"It's nice of you to join us," an unpleasant voice welcomed.

The teen waited for her vision to clear. The man looked fairly strong and wore some sort of uniform. "Where am I?"

"You aren't going to ask me who I am?"

"I can see that your uniform says you are a Colonel Rogers, so I skipped that question," she snapped. "Where am I and why am I here?"

"You're in a nice lab with all your toys," he answered, wearing a sharklike grin. He pointed towards a number of tables which held the contents of her lab, including her laptop computer. "And you're here to help us."

"I don't think so."

"Fortunately for us, it doesn't matter what you think. I'd like you to finish off your program for controlling wormhole locations to start with. Then you can give us a demonstration of how it all works."

"How about not?"

"If you get started now, I'll make sure you get something to eat."

"You can't make me do it. And threats won't work, because you need me alive."

Rogers laughed harshly. "Not really. We can figure it out eventually from what we already know. But my way is much easier and more pleasant for everyone."

"You know, my parents aren't going to be happy when they find me," Cynthia warned.

"Whose orders do you think I'm acting under?"

She realised what he was insinuating. "No!"

"That's right, General O'Neill." The man's grin became even more like a shark, more than the girl had thought possible.

Cynthia slumped back down on the bed she'd been placed on. "It can't be true! He wouldn't!"

"Sorry kid, but… you can't trust anyone these days."

"And why should I trust you, huh?"

"Because I'm the one who decides when you get to eat. Or perhaps if you're good I could get your dear general to stop by for a visit?"

"If that's the case, I'll never help you!" she said stubbornly.

"Fine. Get to work or he'll be paying you a visit soon."

"Alright, I'll do it! You'd better have brought my headphones." She still hoped he was lying, but if he wasn't she'd rather not find out yet. And for all her talk, she knew it was safer to cooperate, at least for now.

"But of course! Mind you, I might take them away if you work too slowly or try anything funny."

"Whatever," she muttered as she plugged her machine into a power outlet and started it up. Soon she lost herself in loud music and lines of code. She was so focussed on her work that she hardly noticed herself consuming the glass of juice and slices of bread that were placed beside her at some point.

The job went smoothly, and after a couple of hours, she had a smoothly running program. On a whim she tested it out on a few stars throughout the galaxy, just to make sure the results were reasonable, even though they weren't useful. After seeing that Rogers wasn't around, she checked around the lab for any means of escape. The room itself was clearly secure, and no useful tools had been left lying around.

An idea struck: use the unstable vortex from a forming wormhole to punch a hole in the door, preferably destroying the locking mechanism. It was a clever plan, but it would take too long to charge the capacitors, especially given that the only available power outlet did not have a power rating anywhere near what she'd had in her own lab. Supposedly Rogers – who she still wasn't sure was a colonel or not – would be bringing in a generator for the demonstration.

She briefly entertained the idea of using some cables to reach from the wall socket to the door, in order to jolt anyone who tried to enter, but she realised that they could easily turn the power off, and even if she got out of this room, there were probably more guards. Plus she was being watched by cameras, so they would know what she was up to.

With a resigned shrug she returned to her laptop. Apparently no one expected her to be finished yet, or else they were busy with other matters. She had no desire to see Rogers again, so she began calculating the power requirements of the formation of a larger stable wormhole.

After an hour's work, something caused her to lose concentration. She wasn't sure what, but when she listened carefully she heard some sounds that didn't fall in time with the beat of the song that was playing. She pulled off the headphones just as three armed men in black burst into the room. Their guns were obviously the source of the noise she'd heard. "Freeze! Identify yourself!" the lead man shouted.

"Cynthia Sanders. I don't suppose you're here to rescue me?"

"As a matter of fact, we are."

"Great. May I ask who you are?"

"Agent Grey, NID."

"MIB?"

"No, NID. We provide civilian oversight to classified government operations. When we heard about this operation, we moved it to shut it down and move you to a safe place."

"Thanks. So… what does NID stand for?"

"None of your business."

"That's NOYB." Humour always helped when she was scared.

'Agent Grey' ignored her and pointed at the laptop. "That yours?"

Cynthia nodded.

"Pack it up and bring it along. My men will take care of the rest of your equipment."

"Okay." She quickly shut it down and placed it in its bag. She followed Grey through several corridors to an exit where she was herded into the back of a green van. Obviously they'd realised that black was too conspicuous. On the way out of the facility she'd seen a few bodies, including that of Colonel Rogers. She wasn't sorry.

The door of the van slid shut behind her. One of the NID agents sat beside her, but ignored her. There were no windows, so the only light came from a small ceiling light and her laptop, which she quickly chose to boot. The battery would give her a few hours during which she could escape from her pains and worries. Hopefully it would hold out until she arrived at her destination, wherever that was. She didn't wish to be in a dark moving vehicle with nothing to do but wonder where she was being taken.

AN: a little shorter than the last one, but it's a good spot to stop. This is a drastic turn from the previous chapter, eh?  
reply to : Jack likes dogs. It's as good a plan as any. (it would be much easier to reply if you had an account)


	10. Missions

Chapter 10 - Missions

"Walter, there's been an incident pertaining to National Security. I need a team to secure the site," General O'Neill instructed over the phone.

"Sir?"

"Assemble a containment team – there's one body, a woman – and have Colonel Pendergast have them sent my way. I'll move a secure distance away from the road. Do you still have the number of the beacon from Carter?"

"Yes, Sir. Beacon fourteen."

"Send them with their own beacons so they can be retrieved. After I've briefed them, I'll need transport back to my office."

"Yes, Sir. I'm on it."

Jack put away his phone. "Team's on the way. I'll wait on the other side of those trees so no one sees them beam in. Can you find me a possible destination for dear departed Aunty Penny?"

"I can look up Velocindustry's holdings in this general direction, if I find a way to patch through to the Internet through a link from Prometheus. I don't seem to have coverage of my regular sat modem here."

"Better wait and get beamed back to the SGC," Jack ordered. He quickly made his way through the trees into a small clearing into which the team could be beamed down. a couple of minutes later the team of four appeared in a flash of intense white light. After brief formalities, he lead them to the roadside.

"The deceased is Penny Sanders, adopted aunt of Cynthia Sanders. Cynthia has developed successful wormhole technology, similar to the 'gate but on a smaller scale. She went missing this morning, as did the contents of her lab. After discovering that Penny was more involved that she had claimed, we realised that she must be complicit with the kidnappers, so we followed her with the beacon I had placed on her vehicle. Unfortunately, we were too late to question her. Upon inspection, we noticed what appears to be signs of torture with a Goa'uld 'pain stick'."

The doctor of the team took a close look. "Yes, the markings are consistent with what we've seen from such a device. And this shoulder has three small areas of bruising as if she was hit with the prongs of the device very hard." He then looked at the chest. "But she was definitely shot through the heart with an Earth weapon. I don't believe a Goa'uld would do that, so…"

"The Trust are back in town," Jack completed, having thought it through. "That's what I was afraid of."

"They must have taken a few Goa'uld weapons – such as the pain stick – after those symbiote poison attacks the Tok'ra reported," Sam agreed.

"Right. I'll leave you to take care of the situation. I suggest you have the body beamed out of here before the police show up asking questions. Call me if you find anything on who did this. And leave my vehicle here for now, I expect to be back."

"Yes, sir," the team replied.

Jack redialled Walter and after a few moments, he and Sam found themselves in the general's office.

"Sir, do you think the Trust have Cynthia?" asked a very worried Sam.

"They'd better not, for their own sakes," Jack growled.

"I don't know why they'd want her. They already have beaming technology and they could easily take a gate from another planet if they wanted one."

"Perhaps a ransom? Don't worry, we'll find her. And killing her aunt doesn't mean they have her."

"They tortured her, Sir. She knew something they wanted. Cynthia's location, I expect."

"If that's the case, the sooner you get a lead on Velocindusty, the better. Now, I need to give the president the news that the Trust are active on Earth again."

"I'll get to work, Sir." She headed for her own lab, where she started looking for where her daughter may have been taken.

Unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately – for Jack, the president was not available, meaning he had to call Homeworld Security instead. General Hammond was pleased to hear from him, but not so pleased to hear that the Trust had killed a civilian and kidnapped a girl. He was however interested and somewhat amazed that the girl had apparently succeeded in inventing working wormhole technology. Jack's brief explanation of how they'd met the girl left him wondering, but he knew he'd eventually get the fully story in a report, so he didn't press the issue.

The next person on his list of people to call was NID Agent Barrett. Happily, the agent answered his phone promptly. "Barrett, it's General O'Neill."

"General. How's business at the SGC?"

"You know how it is, thanks to the NID getting their hands all over our mission reports."

"I assume you have a reason for calling me besides complaining?"

"Yes. For starters, what do you know about Cynthia Sanders?"

"Uh… where did you hear that name?"

"Met her at her parents' funeral yesterday. Well?"

"She's blonde, tall, fifteen, adopted, and skipped four grades of school. Basically a younger, brighter version of Samantha Carter."

"That's not what I'm looking for, Malcolm. When were you planning to tell us about Project Porthole?"

"Oh, that."

"Yes, that."

"We didn't see that civilian research of wormhole physics related to the operation of the SGC. You already have a perfectly working stargate."

"But you've been keeping an eye on the situation, right?"

"Of course, we have an agent witnessing every experiment that occurs."

"Really now? I suppose you planned to steal it when it was finished?"

"Of course not, general. We do of course have the option of licensing the technology when it is ready, just as you do and everyone else does."

"Likely story. Who might this agent of yours be?"

"Her name is Tamara Yates. She's…"

"I've met Tammy. Good job on her cover. You've got her well trained," Jack complimented.

"Thanks. She's a great agent."

"Does she know about the SGC?"

"Nothing. We were worried that if we sent someone who knew about the stargate, they might let something slip."

"Good thinking. What level of intel does she provide?"

"Quite substantial. Sends us copies of the video footage she shoots for Miss Sanders."

"I know a certain Lieutenant Colonel who'd like to see that. Consider it an apology for not telling us sooner."

"Yes, she would. I'll transfer the latest files across now."

"I don't suppose Tammy has mentioned that Cynthia was kidnapped this morning?"

"What!?"

"Looks like her aunt didn't like the Air Force sniffing around. What can you tell me about Velocindustry's history?"

"Her aunt? Uh… well there have been a few inventors who claimed they'd been ripped off. But they were all discredited. Perhaps there's some truth to their stories after all. I think we have a few questions we'd like to ask her aunt."

"Well it's too late for that. Someone's already asked her some questions – presumably about Cynthia's location – with a Goa'uld pain stick, and then finished her off with a gunshot to the heart. We think it's some old friends of yours."

"The Trust? That's bad."

"Very bad. Can you check if there are any ties between them and Velocindustry?"

"I don't know of any, but I can double check."

"You do that, and see if you can find where they are. If they've taken Cynthia, we need to get her back."

"Definitely. And while I'm filling you in, I should tell you that she's an Ancient Gene carrier."

"And how do you know that?" Jack demanded. He wasn't happy that the NID were looking at his daughter's genetics.

"We were looking for the source of her intelligence."

"Ahh, so she gets it from the Ancients."

"Partly. It's a combination of factors. We know who her genetic mother is, but there's no record of a pregnancy on her mother's file, so…"

"So?" Jack wondered where this was heading. Obviously in the wrong direction, since the NID hadn't been able to see that hidden entry in her file that Janet had access to. Sam had told him all about that.

"There's a possibility that she's some sort of Asgard experiment, like your clone."

Jack succeeding in suppressing his laughter. "I'll keep that in mind. Do you think the Trust know she has the gene? Perhaps that's why they took her."

"I expect they would know. Which is why it's imperative that we find them."

"You get working on that, and I'll see if Carter's found a lead on Velocindustry."

"I'll get back to you. Thanks for the heads-up."

"This might have been avoided if you'd returned the favour." Jack hung up and called back Hammond to inform him about the gene situation. George agreed that it would be wise to send extra reinforcements to the Ancient Outpost in case that was their target. With that out of the way, he grabbed some food from the commissary and arrived at Carter's lab.

"Sir, I think I found it," she began saying when she heard him walk in. "There's a small, isolated research lab in the general direction Penny Sanders was heading, which is owned by Velo, but not listed in any of their promotional materials."

"Velo?"

"Easier to say, Sir."

"You have a point there, Carter."

"Sir, you need to see the video Agent Barrett sent me a minute ago," she said eagerly.

"Yes, I told him to send it. Apparently Tammy is a NID plant."

"She knows about the 'gate?"

"Nope."

"At least they've done one thing right. I took the liberty of calling in Daniel and Teal'c. Fortunately they're both still on base, not that it's a big surprise."

"Not at all. And it's good you did that, as I would have done it myself. I figure we'll need to beam the four of us to the car so we can raid that lab. Would the four of us be enough?"

"Yes, Sir. I have a floor plan and it's fairly small. There won't be many people there, though Prometheus can scan it for lifesigns."

"Good. I'd rather keep beaming in public to a minimum. Ahh, here they are now."

Daniel, who'd been working on a fascinating translation of an alien history book, and Teal'c, who'd been Kel'no'reeming, joined the rest of SG-1, wondering what was up. "Jack, what brings you back so soon? Actually, I'm still not clear on why you left in the first place."

"Indeed."

"The Trust have made a comeback. They may have kidnapped the girl whose parents' funeral we attended. Carter has a video which I assume shows why she's so important. Carter?"

Sam ran the beginning of the footage she'd received, showing the 'buffer reversal' experiment. "What you just saw was the reversal of the direction of travel of an active wormhole, something previously not known to be possible. This occurred just over a week ago. We think Cynthia was kidnapped by Velocindustry, the company sponsoring her work, either to prevent us from discovering that they intended to steal it, or for fear that we, the Air Force, would steal it for ourselves. Cynthia's adoptive aunt, who helped broker the sponsorship deal and tried to keep us from learning of her involvement, was killed this morning as she attempted to flee. She received a bullet in her heart after being tortured with a Goa'uld pain stick, which is why we believe the Trust may now have Cynthia, though we don't know if they have her yet."

"Cynthia appears to greatly resemble SamanthaCarter," Teal'c observed.

"That's because she's actually my daughter," Sam admitted.

"I was not aware that you had offspring."

"Sam? Daughter?" Daniel took a moment to catch up.

"Yes Daniel, I have a daughter. Her adoptive parents died, which is why I hoped to spend several days with her before bringing her back home with me."

"O…kay. That was unexpected," Daniel replied.

"I offer you my belated congratulations."

"Thanks, Teal'c. That means a lot to me. General?" she prompted.

"Ahh, yes. Carter thinks she knows where the Velo people took Cynthia, so we're about to beam over to our rental car and drive over to knock a few heads together. After we gear up, that is. Hopefully she's still there. Questions?"

_Elsewhere_…

The green van drew to a stop and the engine fell silent, signalling that Cynthia could turn off her laptop. She still had a little battery life left, so at least one thing was going well for her. The door opened and she stepped out into a dim parking area. It appeared to be the employee parking area of a large office building, but apart from a couple of other vehicles that had obviously arrived at the same time as the one she was in, it was empty.

She looked around for an exit, but the door they had come through had automatically closed behind them. There was still no way to tell whether these NID people were really rescuing her, but there was nothing she could do either way, apart from walking where they led her. And wherever they were leading her, it seemed to be a long way underground.

Eventually she was taken into a well lit room that contained a desk and a few computers. "Take a seat," Agent Grey instructed, pointing to a fairly standard office chair behind the desk. She did so, and set the laptop down on the desk. "You've been very cooperative," he noted in a pleased tone.

"And you've been very secretive. Do you mind telling me why I'm here?"

"Actually, there's someone else about to arrive who can do that. A friend of yours."

"A friend?"

"That's right. Ahh, here she comes." A familiar dark-haired woman entered the room with a smile.

"Tammy! I'm glad to see you."

"You too, Cynthia. Sorry it took us a while to rescue you. We had to find out where they'd taken you. Are you alright?"

"Yeah, just hungry. So… you're with the NID?"

"That's right. I've been keeping an eye on your for a while, in case someone tried stealing your research."

"Like the Air Force nearly did. Thanks for getting me out of there, by the way."

"Um… yeah, the Air Force. You're welcome."

Cynthia looked around impatiently. "When can I go home to my aunt?"

"Well… I'm afraid that's not possible. They killed her."

The teen gasped in horror. "Aunt Penny? No!"

"I'm afraid so. That's why it's not safe for you to go. But don't worry, I'll take care of you."

"You will?"

"Of course. We're friends. But I will need your help with something."

Cynthia rolled her eyes. "I knew there had to be a catch."

"Oh, but you'll want to do this. It's for a great cause."

"How so?"

"Wouldn't you like to be instrumental in bringing peace to Earth?"

"Peace? How to wormholes make peace?"

"With your help, the armies of the Lord can come and rid the earth of evil."

"Uh… I didn't think you were the religious type."

"I wasn't, but I've seen the truth. My Lord needs your help!"

"Tammy, I don't think the 'armies of the lord' travel through wormholes. Are you taking drugs?"

"Don't be silly, Cynthia. Your portal will open the gateway from heaven. Mighty warriors will be sent to cleanse the earth and we will be united under His glorious dominion!"

The blonde girl sighed with annoyance. "You know, this kind of nonsense is the last thing I expected when I was brought here."

"Nonsense? It's not nonsense. I've seen Him with my own eyes. He demonstrated His power and showed me many of the wonders He will bring to the people of Earth!"

"Uh huh. Does this lord of yours have a name?"

"His name is Ba'al," Tammy spoke with reverence.

"What kind of name is that?"

"The name of a god!"

AN: uh oh! I bet no one saw that coming. I hope everyone's still enjoying the direction this tale is taking. Thanks again for all the reviews :D

SG-1 team action coming soon...

pen name: I think she gets that trait from Sam, oddly enough :P


	11. The Bust

Chapter 11 – The Bust

Daniel sat beside Sam in the back of the rental car, Teal'c having called shotgun, much to their amusement. He could detect a mixture of emotions playing across her face. "Sam, are you alright?"

"I'm fine," she assured him. He gave a look of disbelief, and there was an awkward pause before she admitted. "No."

"We'll find her. You know we'll find her." He knew that as surely as he knew they were SG-1.

"Yes but… this should never have happened to her. I should never have left her!"

"It's not your fault. You didn't really have a choice but to leave her with her aunt. You couldn't exactly take her against he will," Daniel reassured.

That wasn't quite what she'd meant. "I did have a choice. I should have kept her. When she was born. If I hadn't given her away, this wouldn't have happened."

"You don't know that, Sam."

"You don't understand. I was responsible for her safety and I just handed her over. Metaphorically. I didn't even hold her once!"

"You knew she'd be put in a good home. And she was. From what I've heard about her and seen in that video, they took good care of her." Daniel hoped this would comfort her a little.

"Did they? She was kidnapped! I wouldn't have let that happen."

Daniel knew assigning blame wouldn't help. "Neither did they. They're dead, remember?" he reminded. "And they had no control over who her aunt was. She fooled everyone."

"If I'd kept her, she would never have met Penny."

"Perhaps, perhaps not. She still might have gone to Princeton and started the same research."

"But I would have run a full background check on the company first," Sam argued.

"If you'd kept her, would you be in the Air Force now?" Daniel questioned.

"I… probably not. You're right, there's no way of knowing if she would have been safer if I'd kept her. But even so, I still abandoned her. I thought my dad was bad, but at least he was around sometimes."

"Sam, why did you decide to give her away?"

"Well… I knew that as a single mother I'd need to continue my work to support us. And if I slowed down, I'd lose my research grants. If I kept up my research, I wouldn't have enough time for my child, but if I found another job, I'd be miserable. And I knew Dad wouldn't be too happy if I asked him for help."

Daniel considered the situation. "You were afraid you couldn't give her what she needed on your own, so you put her in a better situation. You didn't abandon her, you put her in a good family. Because you worried that you wouldn't be there for her like your dad wasn't, you made sure you couldn't do that."

She hadn't looked at it that way. "I… you're right, I just still regret giving her up, now that I've met her."

Daniel gave her a comforting pat on the shoulder. "It'll be alright. Just think about the good side of the situation. Cynthia had the chance to grow up in a loving functional family, you had the chance to realise your dream of being an astronaut – and far beyond – and now you have a second chance to be her mother."

"Thanks for reminding me of that, Daniel. I did know all that, deep down, but it's hard to admit that what I did wasn't such a bad thing."

"I know, Sam. I know."

"We'd better get her back!" she stated vehemently.

"We will. Jack, Teal'c, and I are here to make sure you get her back."

"Indeed, SamanthaCarter."

"Youbetcha. Even if we have to drag her from Netu."

"O'Neill, I believe Netu has been destroyed."

"I'm aware of that, Teal'c."

Daniel was relieved to see Sam smiling at the banter. "So… Sam, a daughter? Even after talking about her like that, it still feels unusual to think of you having a daughter. Especially a teenage daughter."

She nodded. "It's weird for me too, and I knew I had a child."

"I can tell she's yours though, just from watching a few minutes of video."

"The NID thought she might be some sort of Asgard experiment," commented Jack from the drivers' seat. "But that's because the pregnancy isn't on her regular medical file, not even on the copy they go their hands on."

"That's a relief," Sam replied.

Daniel's mind worked quickly through this information. "But if it is on the full version, does that mean Janet knows?" he wondered.

"She knew of the pregnancy, but I didn't tell her the details until recently, and only after she promised something in exchange."

"And what might that be?"

"I'm not saying."

"C'mon, Sam!"

"Are you sure you want me to tell?"

"Of course I am."

"She agreed to date one of my friends."

Realisation dawned. "You put her up to it!"

Jack had his own moment of realisation. "Ohhhhh! That's what's been different about you and the doc lately. When were you going to tell me you finally found yourself a woman, Dannyboy?"

"Uh… next time I died?"

"I might help you along, just for not telling me. But I'm happy for you. I was starting to think you would die alone. For the rest of your many lives."

"Funny, Jack. Real funny."

"Though I must say, Napoleon is quite a step down from the Destroyer of Worlds," the general added in mock disappointment.

"I hope you enjoy your check-up when we get back to base after this mission," Daniel threatened.

"You wouldn't."

"If I ask right, Janet might let me borrow her second-favourite needle."

"Only her second favourite?"

Daniel shrugged. "It used to be her favourite. Until we got together."

"Daniel! That's too much information," Jack protested.

"Indeed."

Sam just smirked.

Daniel remembered a question he hadn't had time for in the briefing. "Where did Cynthia get the Ancient Gene?"

"She buys clothes on EBay," Jack mentioned confusingly.

"Jack?"

"That's as good a place as any to buy ancient jeans."

Daniel shook his head at the general's antics. "Uh, thanks for the tip. Sam?"

Sam was marginally more helpful. "Obviously it wasn't from me, and we can rule out gene therapy, so it must have come from her father. I thought you could have worked it out for yourself, Daniel. Unless that's not what you're really asking."

"No, I suppose it isn't. I'm just interested because somewhere out there there's a gene carrier who we wouldn't otherwise know about."

"That's the most roundabout way I've heard of asking a woman who the father of her child is," Jack observed dryly. "But no less obvious. Carter, there's no pressure to tell us, though it might be worthwhile to know whose kid we're rescuing."

Sam understood that he was saying she could tell if she wanted. "Actually, he's a gene carrier we've known about for a while," she admitted.

"Someone in Atlantis?"

"No, Daniel. Longer than that."

"You can't mean…"

"Surprised?" Jack asked. "I was."

Daniel couldn't accept this revelation. "Has the world gone mad?"

"Yep. Ever since your wonderful Ancients invented their 'Astria Porta'. And then you were born. I'm not sure which caused the most trouble."

"Jack!"

"Daniel?"

"You're the father of Sam's daughter."

"Yes?"

"And you told _me_ off for keeping Janet a secret."

"For a several weeks. I've only known three days. About any of this."

"Oh. Sorry. Sam? Why didn't you tell me?"

"It wouldn't be fair to tell you and not Jack. And I couldn't tell him and stay on SG-1. And with the adoption, there would be nothing to gain from knowing."

"True." Daniel realised what a bad idea it would have been to tell Jack he had a kid who'd been adopted away. "So... what does Pete think of all this?"

"He... wasn't happy. He didn't want anything to do with Cynthia, but changed his mind when I dumped him. I'm through with him."

"That must have hurt."

"He'll get over it."

"You know I meant you."

Sam nodded. "I'll be okay. So long as we get Cynthia back. She means a lot more to me than Pete ever did. And so do you three guys."

"I understand," Daniel answered.

"Yep, the four of us – five of us now – are family," Jack agreed.

"And Janet."

"Alright Daniel, the six of us."

"Indeed," Teal'c intoned. "I am proud to call each of you family."

"Speaking of getting Cynthia back, we're getting close to our destination. Remember: Carter and Teal'c will take the back, while Daniel and I will approach from the front. Avoid killing anyone. Yet.".

"If I have to shoot anyone, I'll aim for the legs," Daniel agreed.

"And no one shoot towards any devices in the lab, especially if they look electrically active," Sam warned. "We don't need any holes ripped in spacetime, or us. Which is another reason not to bring zats, apart from national security."

"Yeah, well hopefully we won't need to shoot anyone. We just need to look threatening."

"I shall do my utmost to appear as a threat, O'Neill," Teal'c promised.

"Glad to hear it, T. Here we are."

"I just wish we knew what's in there, Sir. I can't figure out why Prometheus isn't picking anything up. Perhaps they have electromagnetic shielding to prevent espionage."

Daniel nodded. "I can see why a company without scruples would fear other companies acting in like manner."

"Regardless of their magnets, we're going in," the general ordered. "We're here. Good luck."

The two teams split up and carefully made their way to their positions. There was no sign of any guards, but they still took utmost care not to be seen. The plan had been to blow the doors, but both teams found this to be unnecessary. "Carter, this door has already been blown open," Jack reported.

"Same here, Sir," she replied.

"Proceed with caution." They did so, but everyone had the feeling that they were too late. It wasn't long before they found why Prometheus hadn't detected anything. "Two bodies. Shot."

Sam and Teal'c soon found three more. A full search of the building resulted in a sixth. "We're too late, Sir. There's nothing here."

"If there ever was," Jack replied, disheartened. "There's no evidence that she or any of her gadgets were here." He bent down to examine the man he'd found in uniform. "This guy's dressed up as an Air Force colonel… but no dogtags. And his wallet contains… hmm, his license says Bejamin Hoyden, not Colonel Rogers. Curious."

"O'Neill, I have something," called Teal'c from the next room. Jack hurried in and the Jaffa held up a pen which had been resting under a table.

Sam, who was closer, recognised it easily. "It's a space pen."

"Engraved with the name 'Cynthia Sanders'."

"She must have had time to leave it here before being moved elsewhere. At least we know we're on the right track," said Daniel from the other end of the room.

Jack and Sam looked longingly at the single connection to their missing daughter. "This means the Trust must have her," Sam realised. "That makes search and rescue a lot more difficult. She might not even be on Earth."

"Wouldn't Prometheus be able to detect if they beamed her up?" Jack wondered.

"Yes, I'll have them check for anomalous energy readings."

"You do that. Meanwhile, I'm wondering why one of our dead guys was posing as an AF Colonel."

Daniel had a theory. "Perhaps they didn't want Cynthia to know she'd been kidnapped by Velocindustry people. Putting the blame on the Air Force would leave them in the clear if they eventually let her go."

"And Penny told her she was suspicious of us," Sam added, with a sinking feeling.

"So she might think you're behind this?" Daniel asked, a little bluntly.

General O'Neill's expression darkened dramatically. "If so, these men are lucky they're already dead."

"I believe there are no signs of struggle in this room," Teal'c appraised.

"That's a small comfort. I don't think we're going to find anything here that will tell us where she is now. Someone else can deal with this. We're better off seeing if we can track down the Trust. Perhaps Barrett has found something by now."

"We can only hope, Sir," Sam replied, giving the room where her daughter had been one final look before leaving.

_Meanwhile, far underground…_

"Why does this 'god' of yours need my wormhole research? Can't he just come here by himself if he's so awesome?" Cynthia demanded. This crazy talk wasn't doing much to motivate her.

"Of course, but He wishes to test our obedience."

The teen shrugged. "I don't have any, sorry."

Tammy shook her head sadly. "You don't want to disappoint your god."

"Since when was he my god?"

"Since he chose to bless you with this duty. Aren't you the least bit interested?"

"Nope. Perhaps if you made the slightest bit of logical scientific sense, but I don't go for your religious nonsense, sorry."

The short woman smiled as if she held a great secret. "You'll change your mind when you see when we've got in the next room."

"Does it involve food?" Cynthia asked hungrily.

"Come and see for yourself," Tammy invited. She moved to the wall opposite the entry and flicked a switch. With an electric hum, the wall began to slide to the side, revealing a larger, higher room on the other side of the partition. A few of the 'NID' guards stood around, keeping watch. Some cabling ran into it from the computers in the smaller room. Two huge industrial generators rested either side of a massive object which was protected by a white sheet.

Cynthia analysed what she could make out of the shape. "That can't be what I think it is…"

"Shall we see?" Tammy motioned for the blonde genius to follow her, and together they tugged on the covering sheet. It fell away, revealing what Cynthia had guessed, but not expected. It was a giant metal ring, of similar proportions to the two that she'd created, but at a much larger scale that she'd envisioned being built. Several people could walk through it simultaneously. Wrapped around it was a mass of coils and coolant pipes, and a web of control cables. "It's enormous!"

"Isn't it? And you're the one who made it possible. Every inch of it is based on your designs."

"I work in metric," the teen corrected. "But this is got to be twice as big as I imagined making. The cooling requirements…"

"We used your idea of a liquid helium core," Tammy explained.

"And you think it will really work?"

Tammy smiled. "That's why you're here. To make certain it does."

"How long have you been working on this?"

"I haven't personally – after all, I barely understand it – but we only started just over two weeks ago, and construction started in earnest after you got that reversal trick working. Now, down to business. You can check over everything and make sure it's up to specification and will actually work. Then I have some programming for you. I don't want you to rush, but you mustn't waste any time either."

"Uh… what about the other ring?" Tammy wondered. She didn't intend to help, but she wanted to know as much as possible about the situation.

"What do you mean?"

"There's not much point in me checking over this one if the one at the other end isn't working."

"My Lord has his own Chappa'ai."

"His what?"

"My Lord says it means the Gateway to the Stars."

Cynthia rolled her eyes. "Do you really believe I'm buying into this? I figure you've actually got another one of these somewhere, and you want to deploy troops, or a weapon or something. This 'god' nonsense is supposed to keep me from asking what you're really up to. I thought you knew I was smarter than to fall for that!"

"You doubt the power of your God," Tammy stated sadly. "I will give you a taste of his power." She turned on her heels and left the room. Cynthia watched her leave and then began looking over the huge portal. It seemed very well made, and she guessed it had a high chance of actually functioning. The specs on the generators seemed promising too. As for actually connecting to something on the other end… she had no idea what Tammy was really up to. Thinking of which: here she was, holding a pronged metal stick.

"What's that for?"

"You'll find out if you don't do the duty your God demands."

"How about you cut the mumbo-jumbo and tell me what's really going on?"

Tammy shook her head. "You do not believe. Feel the wrath of your Lord Ba'al!" The guards didn't flinch at the girl's screams. After several seconds of pain, Tammy stepped back. "An ingenious device, is it not? Do you need further demonstration?"

"No, please no! I'll do it, just keep that thing away from me!" Cynthia shouted. She wished she could stuff the torture device down the woman's throat, but she knew she wouldn't get very far with the armed guards watching.

"You made the right choice. Now get on with it!"

Cynthia nodded, though her face was still defiant. Silently, she began the careful process of checking over the device she'd invented.

AN: Sorry this wasn't up sooner. Had uni classes plus I distracted myself reading other fics. In my defense, this was a fairly long chapter. I hope it was enjoyed.  
I should point out to a few people that at this point in time, Ba'al hasn't had much to do with SG-1 apart from Jack, since this is set prior to the whole mess with replicators and Dakara. This is Season 8, remember[edited for a more sensible adjective


	12. Location Calculation

Chapter 12 – Location Calculation

The next morning found SG-1 seated around the SGC briefing room table, wishing there was better news. "Has Prometheus found anything, Carter?"

The lieutenant colonel shook her head sadly. "No, Sir. No signs of a cloaked ship in orbit or around the moon, and no energy burst that could be beaming technology. They also scanned for signs of naquadah in case they'd brought another stargate, but nothing was found."

"I guess they're not making it easy for us. There's been no movement near the Antarctic Outpost, and Barrett hasn't found any leads on the Trust. He's still searching though. He still hasn't heard from Tammy, confirming our suspicious that she's either been taken or else is one of them. Daniel and Teal'c?"

Daniel cleared his throat and reported, "We've gone over the data we have on the Trust, but we haven't found any leads yet. Also we've had no luck figuring out what they want with Cynthia. They might want to study her ATA gene, or try using it to activate an Ancient device, but that doesn't explain why Tammy's missing. That implies that they were interested in her wormhole technology, but it's not much use to them since it requires a portal on both ends, while they can already beam stuff from orbit, including full-sized stargates. And if they were merely after a ransom, they would have contacted us by now."

"It is indeed a puzzling situation," Teal'c confirmed.

"We'll find her. Whatever it takes, we'll find her and take these guys down. What kind of name is 'The Trust' anyhow? We don't trust them, and they don't trust us."

No one had an answer, except to return to their respective searches.

_Meanwhile…_

"What is this?" Cynthia demanded, looking at the code that had been loaded onto her laptop.

"This program is used by our Lord to control His Chappa'ai. You need to make your 'buffer reversal' code work with it."

"I do, do I? Wasn't testing out your giant portal enough?"

"This is necessary to our mission. Consider it a challenge worthy of your genius," Tammy prompted.

"What do I get out of it?"

"Satisfaction. And I don't need to use this." She twirled the pain stick in one hand.

"What about food? And something to drink?"

"When I see progress, I'll see to it. And when you are successful, you can have cake." She knew very well of the girl's fondness for cake.

"Okay, okay. Now that I know what I'm looking at, I should be able to make sense of this and adapt my subroutine." Cynthia began poring over the code and making notes about its structure.

"Our Lord Ba'al graciously has graciously provided his personal notes which contain his knowledge of this program, after having his scribes translate it into our language," Tammy informed. "They should help you get up to speed."

"You can thank him for me when you see him," Cynthia muttered as she worked. "So, he's a foreigner, hmm?"

"He is a God."

"If you say so," she replied absently, her attention mainly focussed on the task at hand. After about an hour, she figured out how the event horizon buffer was controlled. It was similar enough to her own system that it shouldn't be too difficult to rewrite her subroutine to run on this hardware. Whoever this 'Ba'al' character was, his choice of programming language was unfamiliar, but it was still logical enough for someone intelligent to understand.

The dark-haired woman appeared behind her. "How's it coming along?" she asked pleasantly.

"I've figured out how to do it, now I just need to translate the algorithm to use the target hardware. Fortunately I can express the same logical structures within this programming language… whatever it is."

"It's all Greek to me," Tammy admitted. "But don't you dare think of sabotage. What I can do to you is nothing compared to what Ba'al is capable of."

"Right… so, how to I get this program to his end so I can activate it? Assuming that's what you want it for."

"The Chappa'ai has a built-in update system. There are instructions on how to package your update so it can be sent once we establish a wormhole," the short woman explained.

Tammy read through the files she'd been provided. "Yeah… I see that. Great, I can do this."

"I'll leave you to it. I'll bring food soon, if you work hard."

_Back at the SGC…_

Daniel burst into Sam's lab. "Hey Sam, I had an idea!"

Sam looked up from the program she'd been writing to boost the Prometheus's sensors' abilities of detecting a cloaked ship. "What's that, Daniel?" she asked hopefully.

"If the Trust brought a stargate to Earth, we'd be able to detect the naquadah, right?"

"Daniel, we already tried that. There was nothing." So much for her sense of hope.

"Yes, but Cynthia's technology doesn't use naquadah."

"Right. That makes it rather unwieldy and inefficient at large scales, but it still manages to work."

"So, if they wanted a stargate on Earth, they could build one themselves," Daniel concluded.

"Daniel, as interesting as that sounds, it doesn't fit. They could do that without kidnapping Cynthia. And even if they did, they can only dial out. If they dialled in, they'd reach the SGC instead."

"Exactly! They can only dial out, which is why they need Cynthia."

"The reversal program!" Sam realised. "Of course! They need her to adapt it to run on the DHD. With the ability to reverse the direction of travel through a wormhole, they can run an off-world program without interrupting our 'gate, and they can probably disassemble theirs into smaller components if they need to transport it without attracting attention. This is bad."

"I'll tell Jack."

"And I'll inform Agent Barrett."

_Elsewhere…_

"It's ready," Cynthia proclaimed, a little annoyed. She'd worked hard and had only received a small bottle of water and an apple for her troubles.

"You're certain?" Tammy asked, after the guards had summoned her.

"I triple-checked everything. It'll work."

The short woman nodded. She'd seen the girl's work in action, and knew that if she said something would work, it would. "It's time for your next task."

"There's more?"

"Yes, we need to be able to select a destination, rather than just connect to a point on the other side of the room. We haven't tested that in your lab yet, but I expect you know how."

Cynthia gave her assistant-turned-captor a superior look. "I worked on that over the last week. If you tell me where on Earth this 'Ba'al' of yours is hiding, I can connect to a portal there."

"Lord Ba'al's home is among the stars."

The teen rolled her eyes. "Well theoretically, I could fix a location anywhere in the galaxy, if we had a way of getting a portal there."

"Excellent! We can proceed quicker that we'd hoped. You already have a copy of a program for calculating spacial coordinates your system can use, from the symbols Ba'al uses. You just need to tie them together and then all will be ready!"

"Uhm, there's something I don't understand. Apart from this star nonsense, I mean. Why doesn't your great lord Ba'al just open a wormhole from his portal? I don't see the need for connecting from this end and reversing it. Unless his generator is broken or something. I guess he's not all that powerful," Cynthia taunted.

"His reasons are beyond the understanding of mere mortals."

"He didn't tell you? I can see why not."

"Quit your pointless talk and get on with it. Once you have completed this last task, we can open the gateway from the heavens, and the armies of the Lord will come forth, to bring the justice of Ba'al to all the Earth!"

Cynthia signed uneasily and began.

_Also underground, a__t the SGC…_

Sam had sent her revised sensor program to Prometheus, but they still hadn't found anything. Of course, they'd only had it for a few minutes and she couldn't expect immediate results, as much as she wanted them. She knew it was a long shot – a cloaked ship would be able to see Earth's ship and evade it – but it was better than sitting around doing nothing. Her daughter was at stake, and she'd do whatever it took to increase the odds of finding her. Now that she'd completed this task, perhaps she could…

Her phone rang, interrupting her musings. "Carter."

"Sam, it's Agent Barrett. I found them."

"You did? How? Where?"

"Your idea that they might be building a larger portal…"

"Daniel's idea," Sam reminded him.

"I looked up the suppliers Cynthia's materials came from. Actually, Tamara was responsible for ordering. They've all had substantially larger orders of the same materials. Cynthia was planning to build two larger portals, but the amount of material in these orders is far more than that, enough to build a stargate-sized ring. And each order has the same delivery address."

"That's great! Have they been delivered yet?"

"The last order was completed a week ago."

"That's bad. They could already have a working 'gate by now, if they have enough manpower to assemble it. Thanks, this is just the break we need to find Cynthia."

"Speaking of Cynthia, did General O'Neill tell you about our genetic analysis?"

"Did he tell you why I was at her parents' funeral?" Sam shot back.

"What? No, and we still can't figure that out. And the Asgard didn't know about you sixteen years ago, so we're quite confused as to where she came from."

"Don't waste your time on it," the astrophysicist advised. "Thanks again for the intel. I expect the general will be calling you to co-ordinate a strike shortly."

Within minutes, SG-1, 2, 3, and 5 had gathered in the briefing room. Jack gave a condensed rundown of the situation, covering Cynthia's kidnapping and the involvement of the Trust. Sam then gave an overview of the wormhole research and what the Trust might want with it. Finally she described their target zone, which was in a small city a couple of hours from Cynthia's last known location.

"It's possible that a stargate could be placed within one of the higher floors of the building, with remodelling to combine part of two of the floors. However, it is more likely that they are using the basement parking area, which has much higher clearance. Due to the multistorey structure, it is not possible to scan this area for lifesigns, and there is a large electronics store next door, which produces a lot of electromagnetic interference due to the large number of devices being displayed there. It's not safe to beam in, since we don't know the internal structure of the building for certain, but Prometheus will be able to beam us all out in case of emergency. However, there is a secure place nearby to which we can be beamed down, so we can get over there almost immediately."

"Thank you, Carter. Since this is a hostage situation, we need to go in as stealthily as possible. For this reason, we won't be clearing the area until after we're inside, in case we tip them off and they either beam out or escape through the stargate if they have constructed one. Remember that this is above all a rescue and recovery mission, so avoid lethal force where possible. We'll try to stick to zats, within reason. A few NID agents will be joining us to secure evidence of the Trust's activities. Try not to shoot them either."

_At about that moment…_

"It's ready," Cynthia announced. "I've got no idea what the point of this is, but it's ready."

[edited due to a missing colonel


	13. Arrivals

Chapter 13 - Arrivals

"Ted, fire up the generators," Tamara Yates instructed to one of the guards. She turned to Cynthia. "It's a pity Trent isn't here to do that. He'd enjoy seeing this. Oh well, after Our Lord is established, I'm sure we will have a chance to show Trent the part we played in bringing peace." Fortunately the sound of the generators starting up distracted her from further Ba'al babble.

From a control window in her laptop, Cynthia monitored the power flow and capacitor charges. "Charge is building steadily. Power couplings are holding. Estimate two minutes until activation is achieved."

"Wonderful. Open the dialling program," Tammy ordered.

"Dialling?"

"Entering the destination location is like dialling a phone number, I figure."

"I guess. Except it uses these weird symbols. They look kinda like star constellations."

Tammy shrugged. "I guess they do. Now, let's see, I've got the symbols we need written down… here." She pulled a notebook out of a pocket and started selecting them on the computer screen."

Cynthia watched as the laptop spat out the results and sent them to the ring's circuitry. "You know, that location is halfway across the galaxy. Either you're completely crazy, or aliens exist, depending on whether this works. I'm already leaning to the former one."

Tammy shook her head. "No, it means the great God Ba'al exists," she explained.

"Hmm, I suppose he's an alien then. Or you're crazy or taking your cover story too far," Cynthia supposed.

"He is not of this world. By that definition you could call Him an alien, but soon this will be His world, so it will not be true for long."

"Whatever. Hey, we're at 90 percent charge. Stand by for activation, or disappointment."

_Meanwhile, at street level…_

"Perimeter is clear! Move in!" Jack ordered. His men detonated the charges on the doors and swarmed into the parking area. There were no signs of activity, just a few vehicles. "Secure those vehicles and have them searched! SG-3 and 5 begin searching the higher levels with Agent Rivers."

Teal'c checked in one of the vans and came out with a scrap of paper he found on the floor. "O'Neill, you must see this."

Jack hurried over and read the note aloud. "I was transported in this vehicle by men calling themselves 'NID'. The leader goes by 'Agent Grey'. They seem to have rescued me from Colonel Rogers. I don't know if they can be trusted. – Cynthia Sanders."

Sam and Daniel heard the whole thing. "She's got to be around here somewhere," Sam hoped.

Daniel nodded. "It looks like the Trust are trying to appear as rescuers, unless the NID aren't telling us something."

"It definitely wasn't us," replied Agent Malcolm Barrett, one of the NID men who'd been sent along.

"Perhaps they believe it will increase her willingness to cooperate," Teal'c guessed.

"Then we'd better find her before she finishes cooperating," Sam finished.

_Down many stairs…_

"Power transfer complete. All charges stable. Wormhole activation in 3…2…1…" Cynthia watched in awe as the unstable plasma vortex shot towards them and was sucked back into the event horizon. "Wow that was… incredible! Unreal!"

Tammy habitually checked over the sensors and stated, "No dangerous radiation bursts. Wormhole bridge is stable. All sensors reading normal."

Cynthia stared at the active portal. "It actually worked! There's actually another portal ring in another part of the galaxy! Amazing!"

"You should not have doubted the power of Ba'al. Uploading reversal subroutine update." There was a pause as the program was sent through the wormhole to the DHD. "Update is installed. Stand by to initiate buffer reversal sequence."

"Yeah, okay… I've got to send the activation signal at the same time as initiating the subroutine on this end. Hold on a second… there, it's ready."

"Activate it."

Cynthia did so. A couple of seconds later, the event horizon rippled, indicating the reversal.

Tammy stepped over to one of the other computers, with was a scrambled radio transmitter. "This is Tammy of Earth. The Chappa'ai is ready for you to proceed." A few seconds later, a rock was ejected from the portal. "The rock came through fine. It's safe for the armies of our Lord Ba'al to come forth."

The teen genius watched curiously to see if anything would happen or if the whole thing was some weird prank. She gasped as two armoured figures stepped into the room, followed immediately by many more. "Uh… I didn't expect a bunch of men with shiny armour, fancy sticks, and tattoos on their foreheads."

"They are the warriors of Ba'al, wearing his mark." Tammy watched serenely as the column of Jaffa walked down the ramp and wheeled left through another doorway into a waiting room.

"Are you sure letting them in here is a good idea?"

"It is our Lord's will."

"I'm just saying, they look kinda mean."

_Upstairs…_

"This is Prometheus. We detected a large energy burst near your location a brief time ago," Sam's radio reported.

"This is Lieutenant Colonel Carter. Please advise exact location of energy burst. It might be a stargate activation."

"Burst seems to have originated deep underground. Location is a few hundred metres to the east of your location."

Sam frowned. "That's not even in this building."

"That puts it under the electronics store," Jack calculated. "But why would they park here and take her over there?"

"Perhaps there is a passageway underground," Teal'c suggested.

"Then lets start looking for it," Daniel enthused. Looking for hidden tunnels in a modern building was nearly as interesting as doing the same in an ancient ruin, and there was less chance of it collapsing.

"And we need to get everyone out of that store," Jack added.

_Downstairs…_

The stream of warriors stopped at about fifty. One of the last to come through stopped to address Tammy. "The Chappa'ai activated sooner than we anticipated. While your expedience is favoured, the other Jaffa still have further to travel. Four of my brethren have stayed to guard the Chappa'ai and keep it open with a branch. They should arrive shortly."

Tammy nodded her understanding and the warrior followed his fellow warriors.

"How many more are we expecting?" Cynthia wondered.

"Oh, hundreds. This is just a small group," Tammy replied dismissively.

"And what are they going to do when they are all here?"

"I expect they'll begin by taking control of this city."

Cynthia looked at her watch uneasily. "Since I made this work, do I get some cake now?"

"Not until we're finished."

_Up…_

"O'Neill, I believe I have found it. This stairway goes down as well as up," Teal'c reported.

"Let's see, T. You're right, it does go both up and down. How about we go down?"

Before Jack could give further orders, he was interrupted by an urgent voice from his radio. "General O'Neill and Lieutenant Colonel Carter! You are urgently requested at the SGC by Sergeant Harriman. He says there is a situation."

"Just a moment," Jack replied. He quickly made a decision and addressed his team. "All units listen up. Carter and I are needed back at the SGC. I'm leaving Ferretti in command. He gestured for SG-1 to draw close. "Daniel, Teal'c, you bring our girl home."

"We'll find her, Jack."

"You have my word, O'Neill."

"Thanks and good luck." To his radio he said, "Prometheus, this is O'Neill. We're ready for transport." There was a bright flash and he found himself and Carter standing in the control room. "Walter, what's happening?"

"Not much, sir. SG-16 is scheduled to go back to P3B-145, but the gate won't dial. We can't get a lock. I tried twice and then I tried the Alpha Site, but it won't establish a connection. The error code isn't one we've seen before."

"Try redialling some other planets we've visited recently, preferably uninhabited ones. See if you can get through to anywhere."

"Yes sir, General."

"Carter, can you fix it?"

"I'll have to check the error code, Sir. I think I know what this is, but I'm not absolutely certain."

"Will that take long?"

"A minute. Or two if you ask more questions." Jack was silent after that. Carter watches as the stargate dialled another planet and failed. "It's a similar code to dialling a planet on which the 'gate is already in use. Except I doubt all three we dialled are being used at the same time, so it must mean that the stargate on Earth is already active."

"Carter? I don't think it is."

"No that one, Sir. The one the Trust built."

"Ahh, that one. Why didn't you say that to start with?"

"I didn't know for sure that the energy burst Prometheus detected was a gate activation. Now we do."

"How do we fix it, Carter?"

"It's been twenty-two minutes since it activated. That means it should disengage after sixteen more minutes. If we stand by to dial the Alpha Site at that moment, we can block the other 'gate from being used." It was standard operating procedure to dial the Alpha Site in such circumstances in order to avoid tying up other people's gates and so it was instantly available if evacuation was required.

"Do it, Carter. Whatever they're up to, we want to stop them."

"Yes, Sir."

_A few minutes later, in the land of stairs…_

A careful inspection of the lower basement level revealed a large removable wall panel. Behind it, a wide corridor lead to the east. This took them to a similar basement, in which they eventually found another stairway leading down. "Can't they have an elevator?" Daniel groused.

"Use of an elevator would be a tactical disadvantage, as our enemies would be aware of our approach," Teal'c pointed out.

"Wearing my feet out is a tactical disadvantage too," Daniel pointed out. "How many floors down do we need to go?"

"Approximately twenty," Ferretti answered, going on the data from Prometheus. He was fortunate not to see Daniel's expression.

_Downstairs…_

Tammy spun to face Cynthia, waving the pain stick threateningly in her face. "The wormhole collapsed! What did you do?"

Cynthia shrunk away from the angry short woman. "It wasn't me, it was the 38 minute limit! That always happens."

"Oh, so it does. What are you waiting for, redial!"

"I'm waiting for the capacitors to recharge," the teen reminded her. "It'll just be a couple of minutes."

_At the SGC…_

"Chevron seven is locked! Wormhole engaged," Walter reported. "You were right, Colonel."

"It was fairly obvious," she replied modestly.

"Alpha Site, this is General O'Neill. Sorry to bother you, but we need to hold this connection to stop someone else from dialling out. We hope it's not any inconvenience."

"No problem, General," the Alpha Site gate technician replied.

_In the Trust 'control room'…_

"Um… I'm getting an error message. It's refusing to open the wormhole," Cynthia reported.

"What? You told me you triple-checked everything!"

"I did, but… it's one of the safety interlocks. There's nothing wrong with the code."

"There must be if it's not letting us complete our mission."

"It's not even my code. It's part of the coordinate calculation program you provided. I had to link it in to my control program to get it to work properly."

"It doesn't look like it's working properly. Can you get around it?"

"I could bypass it, but I don't think it's a good idea to bypass safety interlocks. I don't know what this one does, but it has to be there for a reason."

"Do it now, or suffer the consequences!" Tammy waved the pain stick menacingly.

Cynthia shook her head. "I don't really like the idea of any more of these weird alien warrior guys showing up. Earth isn't perfect, but I doubt this Ba'al of yours intends to make it better for anyone but himself."

"I should kill you for your insolence!"

"It beats being forced to help with the invasion of Earth," Cynthia reasoned.

Tammy shook her head. "Death is no escape. Ba'al has the power to raise the dead. And kill them again. Repeatedly."

"Oh. Fine! I'll do it, just don't blame me if it decides to blow up."

"I'm sure you'll make sure it won't. I suggest you move so you can have a close view of exactly what is happening."

"Yeah… I'll do that." Cynthia realised that Tammy wanted her close to the ring so that she couldn't sabotage it without harming herself. She had no intention of doing so, as a failure would more likely vaporise them all no matter which side of the room they were on. However, it was best to play along since Tammy was getting rather impatient.

It only took a minute to by pass the complaining part of the code. Fortunately the capacitors retained most of their charge, so the portal could be activated almost immediately. Tammy double-checked that the dialled address was correct and then nodded for Cynthia to open the wormhole. The vortex was much more impressive from her vantage point only a step away from the ring. It was both a beautiful and terrible sight.

_At the SGC…_

"The gate suddenly started drawing 10 percent more power!" Walter exclaimed "Something's wrong!"

Sam looked around at the displays and began typing wildly. "I can't explain this! Something's tried to destabilise the wormhole and it's sucking up more power… there shouldn't be anything between here and the Alpha Site that can cause this!"

_And back at Jaffa Central…_

"Perform the reversal!" Tammy ordered.

"Hang on… it's drawing 10 percent more power than normal."

"Do it!" Tammy shouted.

Cynthia yelped at the brief shock from the pain stick, held her finger over the key… and pressed.


	14. Snatched Away

Chapter 14 – Snatched Away

The event horizon rippled, signalling the change of travel direction. "Power levels are dropping… spiking again… and dropping…" Cynthia shielded her face as the vertical pool of water flickered with energy. "Okay… that was a little disturbing. All readings have returned to normal."

Tammy ran back to her radio communicator. "This is Tammy to the warriors of Ba'al. Wormhole has been re-established and reversed. Please send an object to test stability."

_Meanwhile, at the SGC…_

"Sir, the power is returning to normal… no it's fluctuating!" Walter reported frantically.

"Shut it down, Walter!

"Yes sir, I… wait, it's stabilised. Power levels are normal."

"That was odd," Sam observed. "What happened on the other end?"

"Alpha Site, please report," Walter called into the radio. He received no reply, just a bunch of staticy skwarking. "Sir, we're getting a signal, but it's not matching our current encryption."

"Hold on, I think it's just scrambled… this should be easy to decode," Sam guessed. She ran the message one of her many decoding programs while Walter tried contacting the Alpha Site through a subspace communicator.

"Sir, the Alpha Site gate shut down at the same time as ours spiked!" he exclaimed.

"That's odd," Jack stated. "If we're not connected to the Alpha Site, then where?"

"I've got it," Sam reported as she played back the recovered message. "This is Tammy to the warriors of Ba'al. Wormhole has been re-established and reversed. Please send an object to test stability."

"Baal!"

"Tammy!"

"Sir?" Walter had no idea what was going on.

"Carter, why is Tammy talking to us, rather than the Alpha Site, and why does she think she's talking to warriors of Baal?"

"Um…"

"I thought you said she couldn't dial out while we were."

"I didn't think so… but I must have been wrong. She says she established a connection and reversed it. Remember what Cynthia said?"

"Remind me, Carter."

"There were two wormholes leading from the same place. They repelled each other, so it drew more energy. Then she reversed their connection, which made them suck together…"

"Like magnets."

"Exactly. They interfered, causing the energy spikes, and then must have crossed over. The Alpha Site connection closed, leaving our 'gate connected to the other one on Earth."

Jack stared at her. "Our gate is connected to the one where Cynthia is?"

"I believe so, Sir."

Jack ran for the stairs. Sam realised his intentions and followed. "Sir, you can't…"

"We have to!" The general burst into the gate room, where SG-16 were still waiting to leave. "SG-16! Though the stargate is a facility belonging to the Trust, who have built their own stargate on Earth and are somehow in league with Baal. SG-2, 3, 5, and the rest of SG-1 are there with some NID agents, but we don't know if they've made it inside yet. They have a civilian hostage. I'm…"

"We'll back you up, Sir," their CO stated before he had a chance to ask.

"It's not safe, Sir!" Sam protested. "The wormhole has been diverted to a completely different path. We have no idea if it's safe."

"Then we'll sent a MALP. No, bad idea. Patch me through to Prometheus, Walter."

Walter nodded. "You're on, Sir."

"Prometheus, this is O'Neill. I'm about to send a beacon to the enemy stargate, where you detected that power burst. If it arrives intact, tell me immediately and beam it out of there before we go through."

"Understood, Sir."

Jack took off his locator beacon and tossed it through the event horizon. "That should give them enough of a shock that they won't expect us coming.

"But you won't be able to beam out if there's a problem!" Sam protested.

Her words were ignored, as Prometheus took that moment to inform, "We have a lock on the beacon. Good luck, Sir."

Jack readied his weapon and ran through. Sam followed a single step behind, and SG-16 stepped through immediately after.

_Meanwhile…_

Teal'c held up his hand, and the strike force came to halt behind him. "I sense something behind that door." Everyone aimed their weapons, and he kicked the door open and dove out of the way.

A large cluster of Jaffa stood staring at the intruders. They quickly brought up their staff weapons, but the SGC forces had already begun firing.

"Take cover!" yelled Ferretti, just before the staff blasts began flying through the open doorway. Chaos reigned as the opposing forces scrambled through the hallways and up and down stairways, each trying to surprise the other.

"We've got to find a way around them. I think we're getting close to Cynthia," Daniel suggested though the noise."

"Indeed," Teal'c agreed beside him. He slipped through a doorway and Daniel followed, turning back to dispatch a Jaffa who had thought to give chase.

"What are Jaffa doing down here?" Daniel asked as the pair ran to the next room.

"I am uncertain. Perhaps the Goa'uld infiltrated the Trust while they were outside your solar system."

"It's possible. They had to get to a planet with a gate on it to deploy the rest of the symbiote poison. Which means this is a plot to attack Earth without needing to go through the SGC or risk losing ships to the Ancient drone weapons."

"That appears to be the case. Silence, we are nearing our destination."

_A few rooms away…_

Tammy gasped at the intruders. All were heavily armed and wore Air Force uniforms. And two of them she had met. "Doctor Carter? General Jack? How'd you get in here?"

The only answer was gunfire, as the newcomers moved to take down the guards before they could perform their duty. Since they hadn't been expected, the men in black were taken out without much difficulty, apart from one of the SG-16 team being down with a bullet to the shoulder.

"My guards! You shot my guards! What are you doing here?"

"We're here for Cynthia," Sam declared.

"How in the world did you get to Ba'al's Chappa'ai? There were warriors guarding it. Did you kill them too?"

"What does Baal have to do with this?" Jack demanded.

"He is a God and it is my duty to open the gateway for his holy army to sweep the earth and bring peace under his mighty dominion," Tammy explained.

"Baal is an evil ugly snake who has no business on Earth. Now how about you tell us where Cynthia is?"

"I can't do that, general. She was right here, but I'm afraid you just missed her."

"She left?"

"Yes. Ba'al took her away. It is beyond me to know where he has taken her."

"Ba'al took my daughter??" Jack's voice cracked. He shoved his gun into her ribs. "Tell me where or I'll end your pathetic life right now!" He sounded very very serious.

"No, Sir, you can't kill her!"

"Carter?"

"We need her alive. I want to kill her as much as you do, but she's too valuable a witness."

"I tell you, I have no idea where He took her. Killing me won't get her back. I didn't want her to go. I need her to tell me why the radio isn't working."

Jack realised that she truly didn't know, and shooting her wouldn't do any good either way. He also noticed that SG-21 had followed, and was helping SG-16 to fend of the Jaffa and more Trust guards who had begun to attempt an attack on their position. He pulled out his zat and stunned the dark-haired woman. "Lieutenant," he called to the injured SG-16 member. "Get Prometheus to beam you and the prisoner back to the SGC. Have her waiting in a cell for me. And have that arm seen to."

"Yes sir!"

With that issue out of the way, he and Sam joined the fight.

_Around the corner…_

"Down!" shouted Teal'c as two of Ba'al's Jaffa approached their position firing. Daniel threw himself on the floor, but it was impossible to escape entirely. A singing blast caught him in the arm before Teal'c managed to shoot both of their enemies.

"DanielJackson!"

Daniel hissed in pain.

"You are injured."

"Yeah, I'll – Ahh! – stop complaining about my sore feet now."

"I suggest you retreat for medical assistance."

"No, we slipped past them, which means they're between us and the exit."

"The Prometheus is able to transport you immediately to the SGC."

"Teal'c, I promised Jack I'd get Cynthia. I can still fire a zat, so I'm staying."

"Very well. I believe we should head to the left."

"After you." Daniel followed his friend, moving slowly as to avoid aggravating his wound. They turned the corner and Teal'c found himself in hand-to-hand combat with a Jaffa who'd realised staff weapons didn't work well around corners. As they fought – with Teal'c having a clear upper hand – Daniel slipped past into the next room.

"Daniel! You made it!"

"Jack? Uh, when did you get here?"

"A couple of minutes ago. What's with the arm?"

"Flesh wound. How'd you get in here?"

"Daniel, to be a flesh wound there has to be some flesh left."

"I'll be fine. Any sign of your daughter?"

Jack shook his head and his expression darkened. "Tammy told us Ba'al took her away just before we gated in."

"You came by stargate??"

"Beats walking. Now get out of here, Daniel. I've got Jaffa to kill. You need to have that arm seen to."

"I'm not leaving until we find her, Jack."

"Daniel… at least get it wrapped," Jack conceded.

_About ten floors up…_

SG-2 had found a successful tactic was to withdraw up the stairs and pick of following Jaffa from above. Unfortunately, many of the warriors had decided they should head for the surface, so the shooters had to continually retreat further up in order to avoid being overrun. Despite that problem, the battle went well… for a while.

Eventually, the Jaffa realised they were not going to receive backup. Since about half of their number had been lost to the Tau'ri, they knew there was little chance of reaching the surface, so they switched to their backup plan.

While a small group of Jaffa held the majority of the SGC's men away from the stairs, the others pushed up as far as they could without losing too many. In the middle of the pack, where he was least likely to receive attention, one warrior held a large round device. As the Jaffa above him were shot down, he gradually became closer to the font line. Eventually his time to act arrived. He activated the device and dashed up the stairs yelling, "For Ba'al!"

As his men shot down the kamikaze Jaffa, Ferretti realised what was about to happen. "Prometheus, beam us all out NOW! There's a bomb!"

Downstairs, the other SG teams were facing an ever-decreasing number of Jaffa. Daniel had clumsily bandaged his arm and was zatting any fallen Jaffa to ensure their symbiotes did not attempt to take a human host. Teal'c was guarding a long hallway with a staff weapon he had appropriated, and Jack and Sam were covering a doorway from two different angles. They were interrupted by Ferretti's urgent message.

Lieutenant Colonel Carter instantly realised what was about to happen and took immediate action. She dropped her weapon and hurled herself Jack. Before he could demand an explanation, he found himself pinned to the ground by the tall blonde woman.

"Carter? Have you lost your mind?"

"No, Sir. Are you alright?"

"Just a little winded. What was that for?" He looked around for an explanation and noticed that he, and the rest of the rescue team, were on the floor of the Prometheus.

"You didn't have your locator beacon, Sir. If I hadn't done that, you would have been left behind."

"Oh. Thanks, Carter. I owe you one."

She smiled. "Yes you do, Sir."

"O'Neill, I am glad you and SamanthaCarter escaped unharmed. However…"

"Where's Daniel?" Jack finished.


	15. Debrief

Chapter 15 - Debrief

"I don't see Daniel anywhere," Sam concluded after checking throughout the room. She found a technician and asked, "Did you beam everyone up?"

"We recalled every beacon that was transmitting, but it appears that one of them stopped transmitting several minutes ago.

"DanielJackson was wounded in the arm by a staff weapon. It is possible his locator beacon was disabled as well."

"That means he's still down there!" Jack exclaimed. "How big was the explosion?"

The technician looked over the scans. "The blast occurred just above halfway up the stairway. The store above has minor structural damage and I expect all the glass to be broken, Sir."

"Never mind the glass, was it evacuated?" Jack asked.

"Yes, General, it was."

"What about the lower levels? Daniel wasn't anywhere near the stairwell, so…"

"The lower level would not have been damaged much, apart from immediately around the stairs."

"So he's most likely alive," Jack concluded. "Beam down SG-1 and 2. We'll need climbing gear too if the stairs are destroyed." SG-1 including himself, of course.

Sam didn't think it would work. "Sir, the stairwell will be full of rubble. We'll only be able to dig it out if we have heavy lifting equipment."

"Oh? Can't you just beam it out?"

"Sir! You're right, we can!" She turned to the technician. "You can do that, right?"

"If you drop a locator down the shaft, we should be able to do it, at least a chunk at a time."

"Right, let's do this. Dannyboy probably isn't the only one down there, and he doesn't have much chance against a bunch of Jaffa, with only one arm usable. Unless he talks them into digging a new way out."

A moment later, they were back on Earth's surface. "Careful," Sam warned. "The building could be unstable. We don't want to cause the whole place to collapse."

"Perhaps we could just beam the whole store away," Jack suggested, expecting a negative answer.

Any reply was cut short by a loud report which jolted the ground beneath them. The group watched in horror as the building they had been about to enter collapsed like the proverbial house of cards.

"A second explosion," Teal'c observed.

"Prometheus, what just happened?" Jack radioed. "Come in Prometheus, this is General… my radio's dead."

"As is mine," Teal'c seconded.

The others began to concur, but Sam looked further. "Sir, that stoplight down the street just went dead, and so did that digital billboard and the lights in that café and… I think it was an EMP."

"What is an EMP?" Teal'c queried.

"An electromagnetic pulse. It disrupted all electrical devices in the area."

"The Jaffa did this?" Jack wondered.

"No, Sir, I think the stargate just exploded."

"Oh. I thought it shut off after SG-21 came through."

"It did, but I think Daniel might have tried to use it to escape. Just like the time Apophis was…"

"He tried, Carter? Does that mean he escaped, or not?"

"I have no idea, Sir. And until we can contact the Prometheus, there's no way of knowing."

"So we're stuck here doing nothing while Daniel's possibly dead again and Cynthia's in the slimy clutches of Baal. Could this day get any wor – OW!" The general managed to walk straight into a wall which he was sure hadn't been there a moment ago. "Can you refrain from beaming people while they're walking?"

"Sorry, General, but you were out of contact, so Colonel Pendergast said to get you up here immediately."

Jack rubbed the side of his face he'd hit. "Next time, try beaming me to the middle of the room."

"Yes sir, sorry sir."

"So, what happened down there? Carter thinks it's an imp."

"EMP."

"Okay, emp."

Carter struggled not to laugh. "Did the stargate activate?"

"There was another energy burst the same as previously, and the explosion and EM pulse occurred about five seconds later."

Sam nodded. "I assume the gate – being constructed from inferior materials – couldn't handle the strain of being in use for so long and then being subjected to forces outside it's normal operating parameters. And the generators running constantly probably didn't help."

"What about Daniel?"

"If he'd been beside the gate when it activated, he could have jumped through in that time, Sir."

"If he did, he'll be back at the SGC. We'll head back there and debrief," Jack ordered. "Then we find Baal."

"There's the small matter of a prisoner we were able to secure, General," informed Pendergast.

"We'll deal with prisoners later, Colonel. Actually, we've already got one at the SGC, so they can share a cell. Now if you can beam us back… Daniel's probably beat us."

"As you wish, General."

The gate room guards were a little startled when the small crowd appeared from nowhere, but not too surprised, as there had been a lot of beaming going on that day. "Is Daniel back?" was the general's first question.

"Doctor Jackson? I thought he was with your team, General," a guard answered.

"He had to gate home."

"There have been no activations since you left, Sir."

Jack sighed in disappointment. "Just keep watching, he'll show up eventually."

"Who will show up, General?" asked Janet, appearing with a couple of nurses.

"Oh, Doctor Frasier, here to patch up these good men, I assume." He gestured to the officers who'd sustained the most injuries in the fire-fight.

"General… what happened to Daniel this time?"

Jack didn't want to answer that question, but he had no choice. "He blew up a cheap stargate knockoff. Or so Carter figures."

"Then where is he now?" Janet demanded, raising her voice a notch.

"He had about five seconds to jump through, so he ought to be dialling back from somewhere off-world. He should be here any minute."

"There's something you're not telling me, General."

"DanielJackson was unable to escape with us because his locator beacon was destroyed by a blast from a staff weapon," Teal'c revealed.

"How bad?"

"He was able to move and operate a zat'nik'tel with his other hand, without great discomfort."

"Tell me the moment he arrives. General, why didn't you have someone take him out earlier?"

"I tried to, but he refused. I would have done it myself, but I didn't have a beacon either. If it hadn't been for Carter tackling me, I'd have been trapped down there with him," Jack explained.

"I want everyone in the infirmary, now," Janet ordered.

"Since we were battling against Jaffa, I recommend checking for Goa'uld possession," Teal'c warned. "I offer my services in this matter."

_Later…_

No parasites were found, but no Daniel appeared either. When the unharmed members of the rescue team were discharged from the infirmary and had had a chance to freshen up and have a little food, they met in a conference room for debriefing.

"While this mission was a failure in many respects, we did succeed in discovering and stopping a Jaffa surprise attack and decommisioning a dangerous piece of technology. You all did well to hold back the Jaffa while searching the facility for any signs of the hostage, even though none of us were expecting Jaffa involvement. The imminent threat has been removed. Well done.

"Unfortunately, we still have no word on whether Doctor Jackson succeeded in escaping before the stargate exploded. If he did, he appears to be unable to return, and there is no way we can help him unless we began searching every possible planet. The president has not authorised such an action as there is only a small chance that he is even out there. Also, there are bigger fish to fry."

Jack shot a 'don't ask' look to Teal'c before he had a chance to question the metaphor. "I learned from one of the prisoners that Cynthia, the young wormhole expert, was taken by Baal shortly before our arrival. As a civilian minor and someone with high levels of intelligence, knowledge of stargate construction, and the Ancient Gene, it is imperative that we retrieve her before she comes to harm and before a scheme like this can be tried again.

"Before I interrogate the prisoners for any information about Ba'al's plans and defenses, did anyone see or hear anything of value that can't wait for a written report?" Unfortunately, no one had. "Then you are all dismissed." Jack sighed in frustration as his men filed out of the room.

"I can hardly believe this is happening, Sir. First Cynthia, and now Daniel!" Carter's losses were catching up to her, and she was visibly upset.

"It just keeps getting worse! First she's taken by technology theives, then the Trust, then Baal runs off with her. She's just a kid! A special kid, but still a kid. Our kid. Our special kid," Jack rambled. "I know one thing for sure: Baal's messed with the wrong family!"

"Indeed," Teal'c agreed. "It is a matter of honour that he be destroyed for this action."

"It's a matter of sanity that I get my daughter back!" Jack replied.

Sam nodded, blinking back tears. "I hope he isn't... I hope he doesn't... I..."

Jack looked pained as memories of his torture flashed by. "If he finds out whose kid she is..."

"Sam!" Janet hurried into the room. "I finally got away from the infirmary and heard you were in here." She'd been busy with more serious issues while Sam had been checked over. "I heard that Cynthia had been taken and your mission was to rescue her. I take it you didn't find her."

Sam shook her head. "Ba'al got to her first."

"Sam, that's awful! And Daniel's gone too!" She pulled her friend into a hug and they comforted each other. Jack tried to think of something he could do or say to help them, but it was hard since he was just as hurt by the loss.

"Hey, don't give up hope yet. Daniel's too stubborn to stay dead. And we've still got a shot at rescuing Cynthia. It'll be okay. It has to be. I can't lose my best friend _and_ my only daughter on the same day." He forced himself to believe it.

Sam nodded, trusting that if Jack said it, he'd make it happen. She wanted to comfort him like she was comforting Janet, but he was her commanding officer, even though he was the father of her child. The barrier imposed between them only made the loss of Cynthia keener.

"I will see to the interrogation," offered Teal'c wishing to allow his friends time to deal with their emotions.

"Thanks, T," Jack answered, knowing it would be unwise to interrogate anyone in his current state.

"I should get back to the infirmary," said Janet a minute later. "I'll have to trust that Daniel can take care of himself."

Jack didn't have the heart to give a witty response.

"Sir," said Sam after the medical doctor had left. "What will we do if... if she doesn't come back?"

"I'd retire, and go fishing," Jack figured. "After giving Baal a Ra-style sendoff."

"Same here," Sam agreed.

"To which?"

"All three."

"Oh. But there's no point in promising that, 'cos we're getting her back. So... when we get her back, I'll take you both fishing."

"I'd like that."

Further discussion was cut off by the base alarm sounding. "O'Niell! The prisoners have escaped!" Teal'c announced as he burst back into the room.


	16. Previously Part 1

Chapter 16 – Previously Part 1

Daniel slowly opened his eyes to near complete darkness. A small amount of reflected light filtered through a doorway ahead of him. He was lying down, so he attempted to sit up. He succeeded, but a sudden increase in pain reminded him of the staff wound. He thought back to the last few minutes. He remembered Ferretti's frantic call for extraction, the explosion, and being thrown against the wall. He'd hit his head pretty hard, but hadn't quite lost consciousness. At least, not yet.

The sound of movement in the distance reminded him that he wasn't alone. At least one Jaffa had survived, and he didn't want to get close enough to see what sort of mood the warrior was in. He struggled uncomfortable to his feet and stumbled towards the light.

It turned out that he made the right choice of directions. The light came from two floodlights that had been rigged up to the generators in case the main power failed. Between the generators stood what was obviously the man-made stargate through which Jack and Sam had arrived, and to one side sat a laptop computer which Daniel recognised from video footage he'd been shown earlier that day.

He'd realised when he was hit that his beacon had been disabled, but he knew that extracting him would take a man from the fight. Not wanting to be a burden, he'd stayed and done what he could to help. There was no way he could leave Jack and Sam behind after their recently discovered daughter had been snatched away. While he'd hoped that an evacuation was not necessary, he'd already figured that he should be able to escape through the stargate.

Bending down to examine the laptop caused him to yelp in pain, but the generators hid any sound from unwanted ears. He quickly determined that the gate was fully powered and ready for activation, as soon as an address was entered. Much to his relief, he found he could directly enter an address with standard symbols.

Noticing movement in the doorway, he entered the first safe address he remembered, a peaceful planet which SG-1 had visited ten days prior. As he searched for a way to activate the portal, he heard a shout over the racket of the generators. "Kree!"

Spotting a large blue button on the screen labeled 'GO', he clicked, and turned to see two Jaffa raise their staff weapons. The 'gate whooshed open beside him. Yanking out the control cable, he snatched up the laptop with his good arm and dove for the event horizon. The last thing he heard was two staff discharges.

AN: Yes, it's short, but I decided to just cover one scene.  
Warning: next chapter deals with Cynthia's capture and imprisonment.


	17. Previously Part 2

Chapter 17 – Previously Part 2

Tammy ran back to her radio communicator. "This is Tammy to the warriors of Ba'al. Wormhole has been re-established and reversed. Please send an object to test stability." The short woman waited for a response. Nothing intelligible was heard. Figuring they would just send something through without talking, she returned to the portal ring. She waited for a minute, but nothing came through.

"Taking their time," Cynthia commented.

"I'll retransmit," Tammy allowed. She returned to the communicator and spoke the same words, though in an impatient tone. There was still no reply. "Hello, this is Tammy of Earth, please respond." Still nothing. "Do you hear me? The wormhole is ready, please confirm!"

"Perhaps you should shout louder. If Ba'al is a god, maybe he'll here you," Cynthia suggested.

"Hello, anyone there? This is Tammy of Earth! Please respond."

"Maybe they're meditating, or busy, or went for a walk. Or perhaps they're sleeping and you need to wake them up," Cynthia taunted, like Elijah to the prophets of Ba'al before her.

"You're really not helping." A thought occurred to the woman. "Did you do something to the radio?"

"Me? With armed guards watching me?" Cynthia responded from her place beside the open wormhole.

"How about you have a try at fixing this? I might even let you have some cake if you fix it."

Cynthia knew plenty about radio, but she didn't really want to help any more than she had to. "Is it plugged in?" she asked impudently. She was saved from Tammy's response by an object finally dropping out of the vertical blue puddle. She bent down to examine it. "It doesn't look like they sent a rock this time."

"Hey I don't think you should..."

The teen picked it up.

"Put that down imme..." Tammy's voice cut off and the world briefly flashed.

Cynthia dropped the object in surprise. The floodlit underground room and rippling portal had been replaced by dimly lit metal walls and overhead conduits, and the black-clad guards had been replaced by a single man in an Air Force uniform. He turned towards her with equal surprise.

"Who are you?" the man demanded.

Cynthia was fed up with answering questions and being ordered around by armed strangers. Finally she was faced with someone who was off guard and not expecting her. Letting out some of her stored frustration, she attacked. "Hello, I'm..." She kicked the man's legs out from under him and he went down hard. While he was off-balance and falling, she gave him an extra shove so his head hit the wall. She watched to make sure he was staying down, and then fled.

As she cleared the doorway she realised she had no idea where she was going, where she was or how she'd come to be there. Normally people didn't move instantaneously from one point to another while awake. That was possible by travelling through a wormhole, but she was pretty sure she hadn't, and there definitely wasn't a portal at her current position to arrive through. Deciding she needed answers, she turned back and removed the fallen man's sidearm.

After a minute and a bit of prodding, the young man awoke. Cynthia immediately stepped back so he couldn't easily attack her. "What happened?" he asked slowly, still feeling a little dazed.

"I knocked you down," she explained. She picked up the object that had appeared through the portal and waved it above his face. "What is this?"

"Classified."

"How did it bring me here?"

"That was an accident."

"Lieutenant, people don't suddenly appear in a different room by accident. Unless they travel through a wormhole, but I'm quite certain I didn't."

"You know about the stargate?"

"If you mean a ring that can transport people through an artificial stable wormhole, then yes, I pretty much invented it."

The lieutenant gave her a funny look. "That's ridiculous."

"No, me appearing in wherever this place is without any good reason is ridiculous. And the Air Force kidnapping me to steal my wormhole generator and research is outrageous."

"What? I've got no idea what you're talking about, but we already have the stargate, so we wouldn't need to steal any research."

"Uh... tell that to Colonel Rogers."

"Sorry, I don't know who that is."

Cynthia shrugged. "That's neither here nor there. Though apparently the concept of 'here' and 'there' are a bit messed up today. Where exactly am I?"

"Classified."

"It sounds a bit like a submarine, but you're Air Force." Cynthia had been wondering about the engine sounds she could hear.

"Who are you?" The lieutenant asked. "I'm Pat Matherson."

Cynthia waved the gun, not that she thought she could actually use it, and certainly didn't want to. "I might tell you if you direct me to the way out of here."

"There isn't an exit."

"You're lying."

"Okay, there are exits, but you don't want to open them if you want to live."

"So we are in a submarine?"

"Uh... not exactly."

"Who's in charge here?" the teen demanded. "Apart from me."

"Colonel Pendergast."

"Where is he?"

"At the bridge."

"Take me to him."

Pat stood and waved her towards the door. "After you."

"I don't think so. You lead, and I follow. Any tricks and I shoot you in the back, get it?"

"I get it." He slowly walked out of the room. Cynthia followed close behind. They turned a couple of corners and passed a few doorways. And security cameras.

"Drop the weapon!" shouted two officers who had turned into the hallway behind them. Cynthia dropped it... and pulled Pat in front of her as a shield. He struggled and she dove through another doorway. She immediately saw that there was nowhere to run to, so she reversed direction in time to push Pat into the path of the two men who had run towards her. The lot went down, so she continued down the hallway. A klaxon began to sound, warning her that others would be on her tail soon.

In an attempt to be evasive, she climbed a ladder to a higher level where a handy floor-plan on the wall pointed her towards the bridge. She took a roundabout route, slipping past three more men who balked at shooting what looked like a scared teenager – and fortunately for them, was.

The next doorway brought her into the bridge. Her eyes were instantly drawn to the control panels and computer screens. Some of it made sense... and much of it seemed to indicate that the vessel she was aboard was in orbit above Earth.

The shock, fear, and lack of nutrition were too much. She felt like she was going to collapse, but the matter was taken out of her hands. The last thing she remembered for a long time was an Air Force officer aiming a strange looking weapon at her. A painful blue bolt struck her and she fell in a motionless heap.

Some time later she awoke with a headache and one of the last people she wanted to see standing over her. "T-Tammy?"

"Cynthia, you're awake!"

"Um... where are we?"

"Locked up on some Air Force base. They came through the portal and sent me here. You came a while later. I thought Ba'al had snatched you away, but it seems like the Air Force are able to do the same!"

"Um... snatched away?"

Tammy shrugged. "You vanished in a beam of white light. That's how I was transported to meet with Ba'al. But when the Air Force sent me here, it felt exactly the same."

"And they came through the portal?"

"Yes, right after you left. Your parents were there. Doctor Carter and General Jack."

"My parents came though the portal?"

"Yes. They seemed rather upset when I told them Ba'al had taken you. They also killed the guards in the room and started shooting at the warriors."

"That's good. I think. It doesn't make sense though. Why did they kidnap me if they already had a portal? They had to have one if they came through yours. The guy I talked to said the same thing."

"They must have come though Ba'al's Chappa'ai."

"But how did they get to it in the first place? Oh, yeah, they have a spaceship. That's where I was 'snatched' to. I guess they sent me back to the ground again. After knocking me out with a weird energy weapon. This whole thing's crazy. Maybe it's a nightmare."

"I guess someone will explain everything to us. After they finish the battle against my Lord's warriors."

"Or we could escape. I'll scream to get a guard in here and knock him out. You get ready to run."

"A guard? I don't think we should..."

"You're right. I'll bust the camera that's watching us and they'll send a guy to fix it."

"Uh, Cynthia..."

Cynthia flattened herself into the corner of the room, where the camera wouldn't see her. She crouched down and then sprang up so she could pull a wire loose. The red recording light winked out. "See, it was a piece of cake. And I'm still hungry. And angry. Stop the door from closing all the way, okay?"

Tammy decided not to say anything. After a couple of minutes, they heard the door lock beep and a man walked inside. "Ladies, I'm Sergeant Siler, and I'm here to fix the..."

Cynthia looked at the unconscious man on the floor. "I hope I didn't hit him too hard: this is a really big wrench he had on him."

"Hey, what's happening in there?"

"We're fine," Cynthia replied as she pulled the door open. She found there was a guard on either side of the door. She quickly grabbed one's gun as she dashed behind him to shield herself from the other. "Hands in the air. Tammy, get out here." Tammy stuck her head out to see what was going on. "Grab that snakish shaped thing from his belt."

The short woman did so. "I've seen these before. I think they open like... this."

Tammy found the guard she was behind also had one of the stunning weapons, so she grabbed it and figured out how it opened.

"Careful with those: two shots kills," warned the guard, worried about his fate.

"I'll remember that." Cynthia shot her guard once and Tammy took care of the other. "Interesting weapons." She dropped the gun and motioned down the hall. "You go that way, and I'll go the other way. Less chance of us both being caught." Not that she cared if Tammy got caught, but she'd rather be far away when it happened.

AN: And that brings us back to the present! I hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for all the reviews and alert subscriptions: they mean a lot to me :D Hmm, it's 0132 hours.


	18. Return

Chapter 18 - Return

Daniel awoke to find himself wearing a scratchy robe and sitting in a tent. He remembered that he should be on an uninhabited planet, implying something unexpected had occurred. As he started analysing the design of he tent, a familiar woman entered. "Oma? What are you doing here? Or rather, what am I doing here? Am I dead?"

"Your life may yet be saved, Daniel. I have come to bring you a warning."

"Oh?"

"The fifth one is coming for revenge. To stop him, you must trust the new one in the form of a friend."

"Uh... I've got know idea what that means."

"You will understand in time."

"That's... good to know."

"It is time to return to your friends. Sleep, and you will feel better when you awaken." The world faded to black, and after an unknown amount of time, pain returned. Around him were many sounds of running and falling water.

Daniel opened his eyes to see lush rainforest and towering waterfalls. This was definitely the right planet. The best part was that the stargate opened onto soft earth rather than solid steps. He was in enough pain as it was.

On the subject of pain, he'd really better get to the SGC infirmary some time soon. Standing wasn't a good idea right now, so he dragged himself to the DHD and used his good arm to pull himself up enough to see the symbols. He dialled rather slowly as it was hard to press the symbols and stay balanced without the use of his other arm. Eventually he pressed the red centre button and the wormhole whooshed open.

Fortunately the team had been issued GDOs in case they needed to chase someone off-world during the course of the rescue mission. He struggled to get it out of his pocket and succeeded in dropping it. This actually made it easy to punch in the code without having to hold it,

After returning the GDO to is pocket, he grasped Cynthia's laptop and edged through the event horizon.

_Meanwhile, at the SGC..._

Cynthia had succeeded in incapacitating several guards and happened across a young nurse, with whom she switched clothes. As she did so she revisited the worrying question of who had dressed her the previous morning. Hopefully not Colonel Rogers. The zappy weapon also proved effective on cameras, and she hoped the losses would be written off as results of Sergeant Siler's repair work.

Hoping her hight would hide her young age, she stuffed the serpentine gun under her uniform boldly strode down the hall in search of a way out. Pretty soon she found an elevator. Strangely, the numbers didn't go all the way down to 1, so she shrugged and pressed the largest number instead. She figured she'd done the right thing, since the elevator began descending.

When it reached 26, she heard an alarm sounding. That meant she had little time to escape, as their absence had been detected, or Tammy had been caught. Hopefully the second option. She briefly regretted not stunning the woman, but again decided she would be better off if her pursuers were divided. The elevator door finally opened and she stepped out, trying to look calm.

_In the conference room..._

"They escaped?" Jack echoed.

"I found several guards who had been stunned with a zat'nik'tel. A cell door was open and contained an unconscious Sergeant Siler," Teal'c reported.

Jack sighed. "Can't anything go right?

He was answered by a second alarm and the words, "Unscheduled off-world activation."

"Great, when it rains, it pours. We'd better get down there. It could be..."

"Receiving IDC. SG-1's code. Opening the iris."

"Yes!" Jack punched the air. "Daniel's back. About time!' The trio immediately headed for the gate-room, leaving the prisoner situation to be handled by other base personnel for the time being.

Walter obviously had the same idea, because his next message was, "Expecting Doctor Jackson. Med team to the gate-room.

Cynthia heard the announcements and quickened her pace, figuring she would be expected to hurry. Up ahead a large blast door began to open. She heard hurried footsteps behind her, so she continued through. The sight awaiting her caused her to freeze. She gaped at the solid metal ring which obviously contained the event horizon of a wormhole.

Luckily the guards were all watching the ring, so they missed her reaction. She managed to shuffle to the side before anyone ran into her from behind. The rest of the med team filed in behind her, staying behind the defenses just in case Daniel brought unwanted company. Cynthia paid little attention to them as she was occupied studying the symbols that adorned the giant ring. They matched the symbols that had been used by the 'dialling' program Tammy had supplied. She realised that this was most likely the 'stargate' that had been spoken of by lieutenant Pat.

Jack ran into the gate-room, which Teal'c and Sam close behind. They joined Janet who was part of the medical team that was anxiously awaiting Daniel's arrival – she more than anyone else.

Eternal seconds passed. Finally, a body rolled out onto the ramp. "Daniel!" shouted a varied collection of voices. Jack ran to his friend, but Janet waved him aside with a dangerous glare.

"Hi," Daniel said, barely above a whisper.

"Hi yourself," Janet replied as she checked his pulse. "Anything broken?"

"No. Hit my head." He didn't bother to mention the obvious staff wound on his arm.

"Blood loss and concussion. Get him on the cart," Janet ordered authoritatively.

Cynthia followed the rest of the med team so as to not attract attention. She'd recognised her parents instantly and did not want them noticing her. She knew she'd be caught if they looked too closely and she didn't want to be locked up again. However, when she realised what Daniel was holding, she couldn't resist. Weaving through the busy people she carefully removed it from his grasp and started wiping it down with an alcohol swab as if it was her job.

Sam's attention was naturally drawn by the movement and she quickly identified the object. "That's Cynthia's laptop!"

"It is? Nice rescue, Daniel. Y'know, the stargate blew up only moments after you escaped."

"Oh. Jaffa on my six," Daniel explained as he was wheeled out of the gate-room. "Sam got you out?"

"Yep. Pounced right on top of me."

"Knew she'd get you out." He started to drift back to sleep.

"Ahh... if you say so. We'll leave you to Janet's tender mercies. We've got prisoners to interrogate, a daughter to rescue, and a snake to kill."

"Message. Oma," Daniel muttered.

"Ya don't say. You can tell us all about it when you wake up."

Sam wondered if there would be any clues on her daughter's computer. "Hey, nurse, can I see that laptop?"

Cynthia, who had been trying to slink away, froze.

"Nurse? My daughter's been kidnapped and I need to look at that," Sam explained, wondering why the woman wasn't turning around. Several people gave her odd looks.

One of the nurses asked what nearly everyone was wondering. "You have a daughter?"

"Um... yes?" Sam admitted. "She's the girl we were rescuing from the Trust. She was kidnapped by the company who sponsored her research, and then the Trust took her, and then... then Ba'al got her."

"No he didn't," Cynthia contracted, finally deciding it was safe to turn around.

"C-Cynthia? How..." The question died on Sam's lips as she found herself pulling her daughter into a frantic embrace. "Oh Cynthia, you're safe!"

"Uh... I think I am. It was awful... and confusing, and... everyone keeps lying to me! Colonel Rogers said... said..."

"Colonel Rogers was neither a colonel nor a rogers," Jack informed her. "C'mere."

Cynthia did, and was soon receiving a fatherly hug. "Dad! I... I thought Aunt Penny might have been right."

"She lied to us too. We think she's the one who kidnapped you for Velocindustry. They have a history of ripping off researchers and getting away with it."

"Tammy said she was dead. Tammy... Tammy betrayed me too." Cynthia bemoaned.

"Ahem!" Janet gestured pointedly at the door.

"Sorry, we'll go. Take good care of Daniel. You don't want to upset his girlfriend." He made a swift strategic withdrawal, pulling his two favourite females in the galaxy along with him. "Cynthia, are you alright?"

"I'm starving," she answered vehemently.

"Then we'll make the commissary our next stop. Teal'c, if you haven't worked it out already, this is our beautiful and intelligent daughter Cynthia Sanders. Cynthia, this jovial fellow is our good buddy Teal'c."

"Uh... hi."

"It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, CynthiaSandersCarterO'Neill."

"Yeah... likewise. Please call me Cynthia."

"As you wish, Cynthia." The Jaffa bowed his head slightly.

Jack waved over one of the SFs as they passed him. "What's the word on the prisoners?"

"The short one has been captured, Sir, and we recovered the zat gun she'd taken. We still can't find the tall one, but we found a nurse missing her uniform." He looked suspiciously at Cynthia.

"Uh... is this a 'zat gun'?" she asked with a guileless expression, holding out the weapon.

Jack quickly confiscated it and handed it over to be returned to it's rightful carrier. "You're the second prisoner?" he questioned.

"Uh... I guess so."

"Oh."

"You didn't wonder why she was wearing a nurse's uniform or how she got onto this base, Sir?" Sam wondered. She turned to the SF. "Airman, forget about the second prisoner. She's, uh, one of ours."

"It didn't occur to me to wonder, Carter," Jack replied after a moment's thought.

Sam struggled not to giggle. "I realised what happened immediately, Sir. It's deceptively simple."

"I prefer not the be deceived, thank you Carter."

"She must have picked up the locator beacon which you threw though the stargate to test if we could get through safely. She was beamed up to Prometheus. Tammy thought it was Ba'al, and no one on Prometheus was actually told about her, so they locked her up and then sent her here."

"Actually I knocked out several of their guards before they zapped me," Cynthia admitted. "I had no idea what was going on. Is 'Prometheus' a spaceship?"

"Uh... that's classified," Jack answered lamely.

"Is Ba'al classified? And those tattooed warriors? And the 'stargate'... or Chappa'ai?"

"Well... yes. But I can't tell you anything more without permission. And we can't talk while we're eating."

"Eating?"

"Welcome to the commissary. You might find something edible here. Carter, remind me later to find out who used a zat on our daughter."

"I'll do that, Sir. Cynthia, I recommend the blue jello."

"It is indeed tasty," Teal'c added supportingly.

"I'll... keep that in mind."

As they took seats Jack asked, "Did anyone hurt you, apart from the zat?"

Cynthia nodded slowly. "Just Tammy. A couple of times she use this stick which gave me a really painful jolt." She couldn't help but wince at the memory. There was dangerous silence from the three adults.

They were snapped out of their dark thoughts by the arrival of a bandage-wearing Siler. "General! I'm sorry I let the prisoners escape. You see..."

"Ahh, Siler. Let me introduce you to my daughter, Cynthia."

"We've met," said the teen with a wide and slightly sheepish grin.

"You were saying something, Siler?"

"Uh, never mind, Sir. I... have cameras to fix."

"Take care, Siler." He watched the man leave and then looked at his daughter questioningly.

"The camera in our cell had a spontaneous failure. For some reason he was carrying a really big wrench."

"Ahh. Don't worry, Siler's used to that kind of thing. Carter, remind me to find out who had the bright idea of sticking a teenager in the same cell as a psycho Ba'al follower."

"I intend to find out, Sir," Sam replied resolutely.

Jack took his daughter's hands in his own and declared. "I'm sorry this ever happened, Cynthia. You can trust that I'll do anything to make sure it never happens again."

"Me too." Sam added her hands to Jack's.

"I too pledge on my honour to protect you, Cynthia. I consider a child of JackO'Neill and SamanthaCarter as precious as my own son." He added his hands to the group.

"Daniel would say the same if he was here, even though he can hardly look after himself," Jack joked.

"That Daniel was Doctor Jackson, the archaeologist and linguist you talked about?" Cynthia asked.

"The one and only. For the most part." Jack remembered the time Harlan had made the robot duplicate SG-1.

"He seems nice, and he saved my laptop. I hope he recovers okay."

"He always does," Sam assured her.

Cynthia thought back to what had been said when the man arrived. "He escaped through the... portal? I guess he figured out how to use the dialling program."

"That's one of his specialties," Jack answered. "But I'd really better get clearance for you before you say any more about that. Carter, I suggest you take our girl to the infirmary and get her checked out, now that she's no longer starving. And Janet probably has a million questions. I need to meet with the president."

"The president?" Cynthia questioned.

"Indeed," supplied Teal'c.

[edit for typos I only just noticed


	19. Fallout

Chapter 19 – Fallout

Ba'al had been having a bad day. First his brilliant plan to send his Jaffa to the Tau'ri had been inexplicably cut short. And now it sounded like someone was attacking his palace. First he heard the sound of staff discharges and they were followed by the pained yells of Jaffa. Hopefully it was enemy Jaffa that were falling. As he wondered how the intruders had got so far past the Kull Warriors that had been scattered around, a lone figure ran into the room. She was instantly recognisble, although he'd never met her in person. "Samantha Carter of the Tau'ri. What foolish errand brings you before me?"

She stood defiantly, ignoring the Jaffa pointing their weapons at her. "Ba'al," she spat the word. "I want my daughter."

Ba'al was perplexed. "I was not aware that you had a daughter. Or do you mean you want me to give you one?"

The intruder remained cool. In fact, her expression became even more chilling. "Cynthia Sanders."

"I was not made aware of her parentage. Merely that she had developed technology I chose to secure for my invasion of your planet."

"Your invasion failed. We learned about it our search for her."

"SG-1 helped look for your daughter? Interesting."

"O'Neill is her father."

"Ahh, that explains much. Except why you have come to die here."

"I learned from Tammy that you took her."

Ba'al laughed. "Tammy. Such a gullible human. I didn't even need to brainwash her. Soon all the remaining Tau'ri will worship me as she does."

"Return my daughter to me."

"I never took her. Tammy was mistaken."

"Where else could she be?"

"Children are easily lost."

The intruder stepped forward menacingly. "I shall see the truth."

"Jaffa!" The guards began to fire, hitting the intruder to no effect. She turned from the Goa'uld and advanced on one of her attackers. He found himself wrenched off his feet, and soon knew no more as his neck was snapped. She smiled coldly and advanced on the next.

Two Kull Warriors advanced on her. She ignored the shots from their wrist blasters as if they were throwing feathers. They continued their futile firing until she pulled the head off one and crushed the others face in. "I apologise for the delay," she spoke as she returned to the System Lord.

Ba'al flashed his eyes and gave her a sizable blast with his hand device. It bounced off and caused minor property damage. He pulled out a razor-sharp ceremonial dagger and leaped at the intruder with a roar. The blade sank into her chest where her heart should be.

Her left hand pulled the blade out and tossed it behind her. It was perfectly clean. A metallic shimmer passed over her body and the cut vanished. She pushed her right hand into his forehead, and then put her left in the back of his neck to reach the Goa'uld inside. After several minutes of probing, she released him. "I stand corrected. You do not have Cynthia Sanders. I will need to search elsewhere."

"What did you do to me? How did you become so powerful?" the angry and frightened Goa'uld demanded.

"You are of no further use to me," the intruder declared as her arm morphed into a sword.

"But I can offer you..."

"I have all your knowledge," she informed him. "Now I will take your disgusting life. When I have dealt with a minor issue with the Tau'ri, I will return to take all your domain. And everything else in this galaxy. And then move on to other galaxies. You can offer me nothing. Count yourself fortunate that Anubis has not learned of your intentions to betray him while you still live."

The sword slashed down. Shortly after, the replicator left, dragging her prey.

_At the SGC..._

After Cynthia was released from the infirmary, Sam took her to her quarters. The girl could not be allowed to roam around the base – despite having seen its greatest secret – and allowing her off the base was definitely out. For a while they discussed the events of the past few days – Sam saying what she could – and also talked about Cynthia's adoptive parents. When they had said enough on those topics to last a while, Sam told her daughter of her own childhood, particularly the death of her mother and how it affected her family. As a result they felt much closer, though there was still a long way to go.

When they'd had enough of talking and Jack had not returned, Sam found a charging cable for her daughter's laptop, to replace the one Daniel had left behind. Cynthia showed her mother the work she had done for Tammy and went on to explain the technicalities of Project Porthole.

"You understand a lot more of this than I expected anyone to," Cynthia commented. "Though that's no surprise, knowing what's on level 28. Did you invent that?"

Sam laughed. "Hardly. I just worked out how to interface our computers with it, and worked on various programs to make it work properly. But we couldn't have got it working without Daniel."

"I'm sure you were just as necessary," Cynthia assured her mother. "Can you tell me who did invent it?"

Sam shook her head. "Not yet. I'm sure General O'Neill will sort everything out."

"It sounds so formal when call my dad that," Cynthia observed.

"That's how it is in the armed forces."

The teen nodded thoughtfully. "Is that the only thing keeping you two apart?"

Sam blinked. "I... what?"

"If you or dad weren't in the Air Force, would you want the three of us to be a... traditional family?" Cynthia asked carefully.

"I... I... I shouldn't have to answer that!" Sam protested.

"I see."

"So..." Sam pointed at the laptop. "What else have you got on here?"

"Let's see... I've got some notes on a possible method of tapping into subspace to make a really long range communications system. Much faster than lightspeed, of course. That's my next project after I finish up Project Porthole. And I've also written up some code for self-assembling robots, if we ever got the technology to build the components."

"Self-assembling robots creep me out," Sam admitted.

"Bad experience?"

"Very bad. And very classified."

"Okay..." Cynthia searched through her files for something else. "I've got a few plans for high powered laser weapons, but I never found a usable power source. Oh, and here's my calculations for a hypothetical improvement to the portal ring. I calculated that a theoretical heavy metal in a certain form would serve as a sort of superconducting capacitor that would store and channel the energy needed to form a stable wormhole, without needing miles of coils and coolant lines. The portal Tammy's people – the Trust, you call them – built was on a fine line between being able to function and being likely to explode. If there was some way to manufacture this element in large quantities, it would be possible to create a large portal that would work more that a few times. Though it seems you already have one."

"Ours is made of a previously unknown heavy metal," Sam admitted. "Your theory sounds exactly correct. And you came up with this after watching Wormhole X-treme?"

"Yeah, science fiction always stimulates my creative side. I've got a few basic specs for moon-sized super-weapons in here somewhere, and some half-formed musings on time travel. My parents forbid me to even think about that subject, and wouldn't let me watch any movies or read any books about it."

"You must have had some interesting science fair entries."

"My most ambitious was a ball-lightning generator. It was disqualified after it destroyed an RC bulldozer on the next table."

"Ouch. I can relate to that. My ballista popped a kid's hot air balloon."

"The entry that actually won was my working model maglev train. I still have it, boxed up somewhere."

"I've got to see that!" Sam enthused. "Did it use permanent magnets or..." She was interrupted by a knock on the door. "Who's there?"

"It's me, Carter. Cynthia with you?"

"Come on in, Sir." She opened the door and pulled up a chair.

"After spending the last few hours on my rear, I hope you don't mind if I stand."

"Understandable, Sir. What's news?"

He pulled a stack of papers out of a file. "Hammond says 'hi', and the president and Woolsey say 'good luck'. And there's a few changes to be made around here."

"Changes?"

"Conditions for giving Cynthia full security clearance. For starters, your job description is changing a little. As the science and technology coordinator, you'll be participating in less missions and spending more time with your doohickeys. You'll also be reporting directly to Hammond, at least when he's around."

"Hammond's not going to be around?"

"Now that there's no longer an imminent threat from the Trust, Prometheus has returned to continue being stocked for its trip. Hammond's decided to take command."

"He has? Wow. I thought he'd be wanting retirement by now."

"He wanted to actually see a mission through personally, rather than sending off other people to do it. Sounds quite excited about it. Oh, and he's taking Daniel." Jack didn't look so happy about that.

"Daniel?"

"He'll be all healed up in time to sit around doing nothing all the way to... their destination. We already delayed them by a few days with today's mission, so they can wait a couple more for Daniel to be well enough to be aboard. I tried to keep him, but Hammond decided his skills would be best put to use over there."

"If Cynthia has clearance, you'd better get her to sign the forms so you can speak plainly," Sam recommended.

"But I'm so mysterious when I'm being cryptic," Jack joked. "Right, lets get this over with. Upon understanding what a treasure out little Cynthia is, the president insisted that she be given the attention and care she deserves. That's why your mission involvement is being reduced, and also the reason why you're being taken out of my chain of command."

"Sir?"

"Ohhhh!" Cynthia realised.

"Apparently, we have 'many suppressed feelings' we can 'finally act upon'. Would you happen to know what that means, Carter?"

"I... I think I do, Sir."

"That's 'Jack' to you, Carter."

"Sam."

"No, you're Sam, I'm Jack. See?"

Cynthia laughed. "Just give me some papers to sign. You can sort this out later. Between yourselves."

Jack passed her a pile of paper. "Standard nondisclosure, shot-for-treason-if-you-tell-anyone agreement. The world isn't ready to know what we're about to tell you. Or a lot of what you've already seen today."

Cynthia nodded and signed. "There. I'm all ears."

AN: Thanks for all the reviews, including the anonymous ones which I can't reply to individually. Also, hooray, Ba'al is dead!


	20. The Clip Show Chapter

Chapter 20 – The Clip Show Chapter

"Where should we start?" Jack wondered.

"You could start by telling me where we are," Cynthia requested.

"Cheyenne Mountain. Under NORAD. We call it the SGC: StarGate Command."

The teen nodded. "So this 'stargate' is central to the whole tale?" When she received nods she continued, "Then you should start by explaining it. It's much the same as my portal system, right?"

"Yes, it is. Particularly the larger one after you coupled the dialling program to it," Sam agreed. "It's made of a mineral known as 'Naquadah' and allows instantaneous travel to anywhere else within the Stargate Network."

"So there's lots of these stargates?"

"Tons," Jack agreed.

"Actually a single stargate weighs tons," Sam corrected. "But, yes, here are thousands of them throughout this and other galaxies."

"Other galaxies?"

"Let's stay in this galaxy for a while," Jack recommended.

"Are they all on habitable planets? Who put them there?"

"For the most part. Some are on formerly habitable planets."

"And moons," Jack cut in. "And there are a few on ships, and then there's the one you sent into a sun." He turned to Cynthia and whispered, "She blew up a sun."

Cynthia's eyes widened. "You blew up a sun? For real?"

"I had my reasons," her mother answered dismissively.

"Wow." The girl was overawed.

"Moving along... the stargates were created by an advanced race of humans we call the Ancients. They lived long before the present race of humans existed on Earth. A plague ravaged this galaxy, forcing them to leave in their city-ship for the Pegasus Galaxy. However they were able to somehow reseed life in this galaxy, giving rise to humans on Earth today. They later fled back to Earth through the stargate, due to a powerful foe in Pegasus that was overwhelming them. They sunk their city-ship into the ocean of a planet so it would be safe, giving rise to the legends of the Lost City of Atlantis."

"Which we've now found," Jack put in.

"Many of the Ancients found a way to ascend to a higher plane of existence, where they become some sort of enlightened energy beings who choose not to interfere with the 'lower planes'. Some joined the human population, so some humans today possess Ancient genes that allow them to use Ancient technology, including your father and yourself."

"Me? Way cool! That's a good thing, right?"

Jack nodded. "For the most part. Unless you activate something by mistake."

"So... we can travel to other planets," said Cynthia, getting back to the main topic. "But the general public doesn't know. How long has been been hidden?"

"We've been using it regularly for a bit over 7 years, and our first trip when Daniel figured out how to dial was a bit over a year before that. It was dug up in Giza near the beginning of last century, but no one knew what it was until recently," Jack answered. "We've kept it under wraps because people would panic. Rioting, protesting, and general badness. We've seen it happen on other planets."

"So these other planets are populated?"

"Many of them, but none quite to the extent of Earth. There's a lot of variety. Mostly human too."

"Mostly human? How is that possible, Dad?"

"That's one of the bad part. There's a bunch of snaky parasite creatures called Goa'uld. They take and control human hosts."

"Ugh!"

"Yeah, it's quite awful," Sam agreed.

"They like to pretend to be gods and used to snatch groups of people from Earth to populate other planets. They basically hijacked the stargate system to use for themselves. The top dog of the bunch of Earth called himself Ra."

"The Egyptian sun god?"

"Yeah, they made use of ancient religions to pose as gods, and used their technology – all stolen from other races, of course – as a display of their power to win followers. Though us Earthlings were a bit much for ol' Ra to handle, cos we managed to drive him out and bury his 'gate five thousand years ago. Then after Danny figured out how to get it to work again, we stumbled onto Abydos, a nearby planet where Ra had a bunch of ancient Egyptian slaves mining for him. We gave him a demonstration of how far out technology has progressed since he left."

"What did you do?"

"Sent a nuke up to his ship. That was the end of Ra. But we didn't know that he had family until Apophis started making trouble for us. We got rid of him eventually. Sent him screaming into a crash landing on a planet. But not before he sent two of his ships to attack Earth. We used C4 on those."

"Oh, that's what those lights in the sky were!" Cynthia realised. "So, is this Ba'al guy a Goa'uld? Tammy said he can raise people from the dead and kill them repeatedly."

"Yeah, that's been known to happen," Jack answered, his face darkening.

"Dad? Do you mean he...?"

Sam took her daughter's hand. "Let's not talk about that. The Goa'uld aren't the only alien race out there. There's the Asgard, who live in yet another galaxy. They're our allies and are very advanced. They have a treaty to protect several human planets from the Goa'uld, now including Earth. They sometimes pose as gods too, but they do it to help planets who are recovering from Goa'uld rule. They use Norse mythology."

"They're little grey guys with big black eyes. We got the beaming technology from them. They're good pals, especially Thor."

"Tammy thought Ba'al beamed me out. Does that mean the Goa'uld have that technology too?"

"No, a really uber-bad one named Anubis stole it from Thor, and Ba'al took over all his stuff after we blew Anubis's fleet to bits when he attacked Earth a little while back. He managed to take out a carrier group before we took out all his ships with an Ancient weapon they left in Antarctica. He could have easily wiped us out otherwise. That's why we don't want everyone to know. We don't think everyone could cope with the knowledge of what's out there."

"You're right, it's a lot to handle. Have their been any other alien attacks on Earth?"

"Lots," Jack replied. "Anubis tried to blow up our stargate once. Actually he succeeded, but we got it a safe distance away first."

"It blew up?"

"That was actually the second stargate which we found in Antarctica," Sam explained. "We were using it because we beamed the original 'gate onto Thor's ship in order to escape before it crashed into the ocean, because he prevented anything from beaming down so an enemy on the ship couldn't get to Earth. We crashed the ship to get rid of them, but the Russians found the 'gate. So now we're leasing the original stargate back from Russia."

"That's complicated. Who was the enemy on Thor's ship? A Goa'uld?"

"No, that was the Replicators."

"Nasty techno-bugs," Jack explained.

"Our first bad experience with self-assembling machines," Sam added. "They're made of metal blocks and can create more by eating metals. They aren't evil like the Goa'uld, but they're more dangerous, because they methodically assimilate new technology and destroy everything else."

"They nearly wiped out the Asgard a few times, because they were too advanced to think of using low-tech weapons like guns," Jack commented with a grin. "They got Carter – Sam – to give them a 'stupid idea' that they never would have thought of themselves, which defeated the attack on their home world."

Sam gave a wry grin. "I got them to blow up their newest ship. Which they'd named after Ge... after Jack. They then found a way to trap them in a field that slowed down time, but they found a way to reverse the effect and used the time to advance enough to take on human form. We manage to trap them again and the Asgard tried to suck them all into a black hole, but they escaped, so we used some Ancient knowledge to build an anti-replicator weapon. But one named Fifth managed to escape. He was more human than the others, so we talked him into helping us escape when we went to fix the time dilation device, but we had to betray him, so he had a grudge. Some day he'll come after us."

Cynthia rolled her eyes. "Are there any other good aliens out there, or are the Asgard the only ones?"

"Some. There's the Tok'ra, for one."

"If you can call them allies," grumbled Jack.

"Oh?"

"They're not always as cooperative as we'd like," Sam explained.

"They rarely cooperated. They criticised our methods, and never trusted us enough to give us the intel we needed. I can't say I'm sorry we went our separate ways," Jack complained. "The only one of them I trust is your dad."

"Mom? Your dad is an alien?"

"Oh, no, not at all. The Tok'ra are a faction of the Goa'uld. They're symbiotic rather than parasitic. There are not many of them and their numbers are decreasing, so they rely on stealth, which is why they decided an active alliance wouldn't work. My dad became a host to cure his cancer, and to be a kind of ambassador. But enough about the Tok'ra. There's also the Tollan."

"Until the Goa'uld nearly succeeded in blackmailing them into destroying us and then wiped them out."

Sam winced. "That was such a shame. They were good people, apart from refusing to share technology because they see us as too primitive to handle it. Fortunately the Asgard don't completely share that sentiment."

"At least they saved Skaara," Jack pointed out. He quickly explained to Cynthia, "He was a kid I met on Abydos. Apophis took him to be a host for his 'son' Klorel. The Tollan freed him... after a drawn-out legal process."

"The galaxy is a strange place," Cynthia commented.

"It sure is. One of the most Earth-like places I remember is Hebredan, which is shared by humans and a humanoid raced called the Serrakin who freed them from the Goa'uld. We're on friendly terms with them, and they have more advanced technology than us. It's the only place that matches Earth in terms of advertising!"

"Carter participated in a wild space race with a Serrakin named Warrick last year," Jack revealed. "Which reminds me, what about this year?"

"Their year is longer that ours, so it's not on for another month," Sam answered excitedly.

"Sounds fun. Who are 'Hammond' and 'Woolsey'?"

"General George Hammond was the much-loved commander of this base for the seven years before Jack was promoted. He now runs the department of Homeworld Security, as they're calling it."

"And Woolsey... he's a bureaucrat from the International Oversight Advisory, who try to tell us what to do, now that we've graciously told many world governments about the stargate."

"I'm guessing Prometheus is the spaceship I was accidentally beamed onto?"

"Yep, Earth's first deep space cruiser. Thanks to the Asgard, it's hyperspace capable, so it can get around pretty quickly. It's about to go on a trip to the Pegasus Galaxy, to join the Atlantis Expedition. Daniel's an expert on all things Ancient, so he's been wanting to go for a long time. Jack wants to keep him here."

"A trip to the Pegasus Galaxy," Cynthia repeated quietly to herself. "Incredible." Then she snapped out of her musings and asked, "What did you do before you were a general, Dad? Apart from give advice to TV shows."

"It was my job to keep Carter, Danny, and Teal'c in line. We were a team called SG-1. Actually, we still are, except I don't go off-world much these days. And with Daniel leaving and Carter focusing more on scientific stuff... well, we'll always be SG-1, wherever we are," Jack explained fondly.

"Basically we'd go to other planets, get in trouble, get out of it, and come hope. The goal of the SGC is to gain allies and technology for the defence of Earth, particularly against the Goa'uld," Sam stated more formally.

"That reminds me, we never finished the list of attacks on Earth. There was the giant asteroid Anubis sent to knock us back to the stone age, a few diseases we brought back, the occasional alien incursion of the SGC, today's Jaffa invasion, various Goa'ulds discovered on Earth, such as Hathor, Seth, and Osiris..."

"Jaffa? Is that what those warriors with helmets, tattoos, and sticks were called?"

Sam nodded. "Yes, they're a race of modified humans that serve the Goa'uld. They have the mark of their god on their heads. Some of them have realised their gods are actually mortal pretenders and are fighting for freedom. They all carry a larval Goa'uld in a pouch, which acts as their immune system. Many of the rebels use a drug developed by the Tok'ra so they don't need to rely on the Goa'uld to survive."

"Teal'c is one of the rebels?" Cynthia asked insightfully.

"Yup, he's one of the founders of the rebellion. He was First Prime to Apophis, hence the gold mark. He helped us escape and joined us when Apophis caught us on Sam's first mission. And he does actually have a sense of humour."

"This has been really fascinating, and kinda scary too. I think that's all I can handle for now," Cynthia stated. "How about we get something to eat?"

"It is getting towards that time," Jack agreed. "Let's go see what interesting rumours are spreading about us."

AN: Good to hear that people are rather enjoying this :D It's fun to write... which is why I seem to spend most of my time writing it.

[edit for some typos


	21. Bets and Discussion

Chapter 21 - Bets and Discussion

Before going to the commissary, the trio chose to check up on Daniel. He was in much better shape, though he was sleeping, so they couldn't talk to him. Janet joined the group so she could hear an explanation of the earlier events, not having had time when Cynthia stopped by earlier. As they left the infirmary she asked the now BDU-clad Cynthia, "I hear you're responsible for Siler's latest bruise."

"Yeah… Though I guess I'm not the first prisoner to escape."

"No, but you're the first prisoner to impersonate a nurse."

"Sorry about that. I didn't know I was among friends."

"In your defence, you were imprisoned," Jack pointed out.

"How did your daughter come to be a prisoner?" Janet wondered.

"Prometheus beamed her up by mistake when I chucked a beacon through the 'gate to check if it was safe to go through," Jack explained.

"I didn't take kindly to suddenly being elsewhere, and they didn't take kindly to me beating up their men," Cynthia finished

"Beating up?" Janet echoed.

Cynthia shrugged. "I wouldn't last a few seconds against any of these guys in a fair fight, but I took them by surprise. Then someone zapped me with a zat."

"Zatted," Jack corrected. "It's shorter. Shorter English is better English."

"Janet, you don't seem surprised at Cynthia's parentage," Sam commented.

"I already figured it out, though I didn't know if you had a boy or a girl until you told me before the funeral," Janet explained. "So… what are you going to do about the situation? Does General Hammond know about it yet?"

"I fully briefed Hammond, Woolsey, and the president on our girl-wonder. They were impressed. She has full clearance now, and we get to keep her."

"And what did they think of you and Sam having a child together?" Janet pressed.

"It was… awkward. They're reducing her off-world participation and put her under Hammond's direct command. Although Hammond has decided to take control of Prometheus for its mission to Pegasus."

"He has? I knew he had it in him. Wait, did you say Sam is no longer under your command?"

"Effective immediately," Jack affirmed.

Janet's face was overtaken by a disturbingly wide grin. "Ferretti had better be in the commissary."

"What's going on, Janet?"

"You seem extremely… pleased, Doc."

"This is the face of a woman who is about to be rich. And I'm happy for you as well."

"Rich?" Jack questioned.

"Janet, you didn't!"

Janet nodded. "You bet I did. A couple of months ago."

The group entered the commissary and spied Major Ferretti speaking with Teal'c. Jack waved and his group began heading in their direction. "What did she do?" he whispered to Sam.

"You'll see in a moment," she whispered back.

"How's Daniel," Ferretti asked when the newcomers were within talking distance.

"He's doing well," Janet replied. "Considering that he was hit by a staff blast and knocked around by an explosion, and didn't receive treatment for a few hours."

"I heard that the girl we were rescuing showed up. Is this her?"

"Yep, this is Cynthia Sanders, girl genius." Cynthia smiled shyly at her father's words.

"I heard some rather interesting stories about her. Teal'c won't tell me anything."

"It is not my place to say," Teal'c stated, obviously not for the first time.

"Don't believe a word of it, Lou" Jack recommended.

Louis Ferretti nodded. "I heard from a few people that she's yours and…"

"And?"

Lou looked back and forth between the two tall blonde scientists. "And Lieutenant Colonel Carter's."

"That part was true," Jack admitted. "Heard anything else?"

"Uh… you mean it's really true, Sir?"

"That is what I said."

"Oh." Lou looked uncomfortable. "I also heard that she KO'd Siler with his wrench and stole a nurse's uniform."

"That's true too," Sam replied.

"Did she really take down three men on Prometheus?"

"Hello, I'm right here. You can ask me, you know. And yes, I did."

"Okay… did you really blow up a stargate, causing Daniel to be in the infirmary right now?"

"What? No, he did that himself."

"Though the Jaffa were on his six, so it could have been their fault," Jack added.

"So, you and Carter actually have a daughter? How old is she, exactly?"

Jack gave him an odd look, but Sam answered, "She's fifteen."

"And Sam's already been taken out of the general's direct command," Janet mentioned significantly.

"You don't say." Lou pulled a black book out of his pocket and started thumbing through the pages. "Here we go: 'Sam and Jack will be able to get together after it is revealed that they have a 15-year-old daughter who was given up for adoption at birth.' Submitted by Doctor Frasier over two months ago. We have a winner!"

"You bet on us?" Jack questioned. "Hey, give me that." He snatched at the book but Ferretti was too quick.

"Sorry, no one sees this but me. There's a lot of ongoing wagers in here which I can't reveal."

"You used inside information, didn't you, Doc?" Jack asked Janet.

"It was still a big gamble that she would be revealed before her next birthday, plus you could have had a boy. So I didn't cheat," the CMO justified.

"I expect a cut," Sam demanded.

Cynthia chimed in with, "Me too."

"How about I take you two and Cassie for a shopping spree?" Janet suggested.

"Who's Cassie?"

"My daughter. She's a few years older than you. You'll get on great. Now, I'd check back on my patients."

"Missing Dannyboy already?" Jack teased.

"There's not much to miss at the moment," she shot back.

On a more serious note Jack told her, "I suggest you give him as much extra care as possible. Hammond's taking him."

"To Atlantis?"

Jack nodded. "He's been pestering me about it for weeks. I tried to keep him but Hammond pulled rank. Daniel doesn't know yet, but you can tell him if you want."

"I… I'll do that. Thank you for informing me, General." She quickly left the room, looking somewhat upset.

Jack sighed. "I knew that would go badly. On the bright side, this should keep Daniel from staying in Pegasus indefinitely. Hey, Lou, is there a betting pool on those two?"

"Carter already won the bet on them getting together, but there's a couple of new ones involving them."

Jack shook his head at this news. Trust Carter to cash in when she was the one who'd caused the couple to start dating. "Why wasn't I informed?"

"Because you didn't place a bet, Sir. Do you want to bet on the doctors' engagement?"

"Uh… no, I'll leave that to Carter. And I thought you said there were two bets. What's the other?"

"Well… that would be the details of they – currently hypothetical – first child. I can reveal that a large number of people are expecting Daniel to name his firstborn after you."

"Jack Jackson? I don't think so. Teal'c is a perfectly good name."

"Indeed."

Cynthia choked on her bottled water.

When things had calmed down, Ferretti asked Cynthia, "So, young lady, are you thinking of working here at the SGC?"

The teen smiled. "If they want me badly enough…"

"We certainly do," Sam quickly affirmed.

"I hadn't finished. I was going to say, if you want me badly enough to let me go on the expedition to Atlantis."

"Atlantis? You want to go to Atlantis? Why?" Sam questioned in shock.

"Why not? It's the lost city of the Ancients, full of Ancient technology, and I have the Ancient gene. It's part of my family history. Very distant family history. It would be awesome!"

"It would be very dangerous," Jack countered.

"And working here wouldn't be? If anything, I might be safer away from Earth for a while."

"You're only fifteen!"

"Dad, I invented my own stargate. Is there a minimum age for trips to other galaxies?"

"Well, no, but… you're a civilian. A civilian with a very valuable mind."

"So's Daniel."

"And I don't want him to go either. Look, Cynthia, we only met you two days ago and you've been kidnapped twice since then. Your mother and I don't want to let you go off on your own to another galaxy."

"You've only known me for a few days, so you can survive without me for a while. And no one can kidnap me if I'm not on Earth."

"We've got no idea what's actually happening in Pegasus," Jack pointed out. "We haven't heard from the expedition since they gated to Atlantis. We only know that the Ancients abandoned the city."

"Then they might need my help," Cynthia put forth. "In any case, I want to go, so if you want me to work here, you'd better find a way for it to happen."

"I think it's time you were in bed, Cynthia," ordered her mother.

"But…"

"You've had a big day. This discussion can wait til the morning," her father instructed.

"But I don't have a bed," said Cynthia practically.

"Then whoever's in charge of this facility should get you one."

"That would be you, Sir."

"You make a good point, Carter. We could put her in one of the VIP rooms. How does that sound, Cynthia?"

The teen yawned. "Anything sounds good at the moment. Good night everyone."

"Good night, Cynthia. May you have pleasant dreams," Teal'c replied.

"You too… if Jaffa have dreams."

Once their daughter was comfortably installed in a well-guarded VIP room, Jack and Sam let out a collective sigh of relief. "I'm glad that's over," Sam admitted.

"Me too. Although you could say that it's only just begun. I can't believe she wants to go to Atlantis immediately after hearing about it."

"Yeah, that was a surprise. She must have her parents' adventurous nature."

"Talking of which, would it be considered too adventurous if I was to kiss you?"

"Only if you did it in front of Hammond, the president, or my dad."

"Your dad… Perhaps I should be thinking of going to the Pegasus Galaxy. For my own safety. Nah, he'd hunt me down even there."

"Jack…" Sam uttered in a dangerous voice.

"Carter? Sam? What?"

"_I_'ll hunt you down, if you don't kiss me soon."

"Can't argue with that."

AN: wow, over 100 reviews! Many thanks to all my readers :D  
Next chapters have spoilers for Gemini...


	22. Double Trouble

Chapter 22 – Double Trouble

Disclaimer: Lots of lines are borrowed from Gemini, while the rest are mine.

"Hey Daniel."

"Janet. You look upset. Did… did someone… die?"

Janet shook her head. "No. I just heard from General O'Neill. You're being reassigned as soon as you're well enough to travel."

"What? Reassigned? Where? What's going on, Janet?"

"Hammond's taking you."

"Hammond? You mean to Washington?"

"Atlantis."

"Hammond's going to Atlantis? I'm going to Atlantis? I'm going to Atlantis! Jack can't be happy about that." He suddenly realised what was going on. "And neither are you."

"No, I'm not. I don't know how long you'll be away, or if you'll ever be back!"

"Janet, that happens on a lot of our missions."

"None of those were to other galaxies, Daniel."

"Another planet, another galaxy, is there really a big difference?"

"Yes, I know you'll be gone for at least a few months. Daniel, it's bad enough when you're thought to be dead or trapped, but going for so long voluntarily and having to say goodbye…"

"Janet… If you really want me to stay, I will, okay?"

"General Hammond won't just let you back out."

"Then I'll threaten to resign."

"You'd do that for me?"

"Yes Janet, for you I would."

Janet considered his words. "In that case, I figure I can trust you to look after yourself. Remember, you won't have me to put you back together."

"I'll keep that in mind. Are you sure you're okay with me going?"

"I know how much you want to go, Daniel, and I love you enough to let you go."

"And I love you enough to come back," Daniel responded.

"Well you'd better get well quickly, as they'll want to leave in a few days. Get some sleep."

"I'll do that, Janet."

_Next morning…_

"Hey Daniel."

"Jack. You look happy."

Jack shrugged. "You look a lot better than when you rolled out of the stargate."

"I feel better too. Did something good happen, Jack?"

"A few things. I've got someone I'd like you to meet."

Daniel watched as a tall blonde girl walked up to his bed. "Cynthia, right? I saw you on video yesterday. I thought Ba'al had you."

"Cynthia, this guy who talks too much is Daniel."

"Hi Daniel. Thanks for rescuing my computer. I'm sorry I got you hurt."

"Not your fault."

"Those Jaffa came though a portal I invented with the help of a program I wrote. And…"

"Cynthia, you're not responsible for what happened. You were forced. There's nothing to apologise for."

"So, you did you get away from Ba'al?" Daniel wondered.

"Oh, he never had me. Actually, I was accidentally beamed up to Prometheus, and they didn't know who I was, so I ended up locked in an SGC cell."

"Actually, she knocked out Siler and escaped," Jack added. "She was the 'nurse' who took the laptop off your hands."

"That's pretty funny," Daniel observed, though he didn't feel up to doing much beyond smiling. "It's good to know you did get rescued, even if it was an accident."

"It was nice to meet you, Daniel. I'll see you around."

Daniel shook his head. "Actually, I'm being reassigned. Janet told me last night."

"That's right, you're going to Atlantis. I'm coming too."

"Cynthia, you're not going."

"You want to come to Atlantis?"

"Sure I do. It has Ancient technology, I have the Ancient gene, and the expedition might need my help. And I get to travel to a another galaxy!"

"Cynthia, I'm not letting you go," her father repeated.

"Dad, I'll build you some giant space guns if you let me go."

"We've already got the Ancient defence chair. It just needs a power source."

"I could work on that. And I can give you the reversal program I wrote, so you can turn the tables if anyone tries to attack you," the girl offered.

"Looks like she's got you over a barrel, Jack. Cynthia, I guess I'll be seeing you on Prometheus in a few days."

Jack sighed. "I'll need to talk to Hammond about this. Just remember, I'll be making you responsible for her."

Daniel shuddered at the though of trying to control a hyper-intelligent 15-year-old, especially one who was both Jack and Sam's kid. "Uh… if you insist."

"I do, Danny."

"Oh boy."

"Though if I have my way, she won't be going."

"Dad! If you don't let me go, I'll… I'll… invent my own way get there!"

"That's worth seeing," smirked Daniel. "It's pretty obvious whose daughter she is. Which reminds me, does General Hammond know?"

"I told him the whole story. Along with the president and Woolsey."

"Ouch."

"Yeah. They were pretty shocked by the whole thing. Woolsey wanted to put Cynthia in protective custody. Hammond looked very disapproving when he found out whose kid she is, and the president looked like he was about to laugh. They eventually decided that Sam shouldn't go off-world so much."

"On first name basis now, are you?"

"Oh, and as 'science and technology coordinator' she no longer reports to me. For some reason they thought it would be best if certain regulations no longer applied to us."

"So that's why you look…"

"Unscheduled off-world activation!"

"Saved by the bell. See you later Danny, we've got visitors." Jack hurried to the control room, with Cynthia close behind. They arrived moments behind Sam, just in time to see the wormhole open. "What you got there, Walter?"

"Receiving IDC." Walter checked the computer screen. "It doesn't clear."

"Why not?" Sam wondered.

"Looks like it's an old one.

"Missing SG personnel?" Sam suggested.

"Negative. It looks like it's yours, ma'am," said Walter in surprise. "Or at least it was. It's been invalid for four months."

"That's an identification code, so they know who to let through," Jack explained to Cynthia. "If we don't open the iris… nothing can reintegrate on this end."

"Wouldn't it be better to…"

"Receiving text message," Walter reported. Everyone looked at the screen, where it said 'SEND M.A.L.P.'.

"MALP?" Cynthia questioned.

"Mobile Analytic Laboratory Probe. It's what we use to check if a planet is safe before visiting. Obviously whoever we're dealing with knows something about the SGC. We should check this out."

Jack tapped Walter on the shoulder. "Prepare a MALP."

"Yes, Sir."

After a few minutes, a MALP sat on the bottom of the gate ramp. Two technicians finished prepping it as the stargate dialled out. Cynthia noticed guiltily that Siler still wore a bandage where she'd hit him.

"What do we know of this 'gate address?" inquired Teal'c, who had joined the others in the control room.

"Nothing, other than the fact that it's on the outer edge of the galaxy. The only address in that region that we've been to is the waterfall planet with all the rainforest. Actually, that's the one Daniel used yesterday."

"Chevron seven locked!" Walter reported. They all watched the amazing sight of the gate 'kawhooshing'. "Outgoing wormhole established."

"Y'know, we could have avoided redialling if…" Cynthia began to suggest.

"Not now, Cynthia." Jack leaned down to the mic. "Siler?"

"MALP is prepped and ready to go, sir."

"Go ahead," Jack instructed, and Sam typed the command to send the MALP to its destination.

"MALP is en route… MALP has reached its destination." It appeared to have been successful, except that nothing appeared on the screen that should have showed the video screen.

"Carter?" Jack asked after taking a close look at nothing.

"We are receiving MALP telemetry, sir. Signal is five by five. Video's working fine; there's just nothing to see."

"Does that thing have a light?" Cynthia wondered.

Sam typed in a command and the MALP's lights turned on, revealing an unexpected but familiar figure. Several jaws dropped. "That's me!"

"Alright, you've got our attention," Jack transmitted to the MALP. "Who are you?"

"My name is Samantha Carter," returned the reply.

"Alright, we've got a little conflict with that statement. We've already got one here."

"There are two of us."

"If only," Jack said to himself. Sam couldn't help but giggle at him, and Cynthia made a disgusted face. Teal'c ignored them.

Sam signalled for her daughter to remain silent and then asked her double, "Where are you from? How did you know how to contact us?"

"It's strange: I recognise my voice. I was made in Samantha Carter's image. I know what she knows; I feel what she feels."

"You were made? Who made you?"

" The one you call Fifth."

Sam realised what she was talking to. "Oh my God. She's a Replicator!"

The replicator continued. "No doubt you are surprised by my arrival in your galaxy. I come in advance of the others but they will be here soon."

"For what reason have you contacted us?" Teal'c wanted to know.

"I need your help. I wish to be destroyed. You have a weapon capable of separating the keron pathways that link my individual cells. The effect would be instantaneous… and painless."

Jack didn't quite believe that. "You folks can feel pain?"

"I can feel a lot of things. I know you hate and fear the Replicators, and with good reason, so this should be easy for you."

"Yeah, well ... we'll have to get back to you on this." Jack signalled Walter to kill the connection. "Well… that was surprising. What say we move this to the briefing room?"

"We should fill Daniel in on the situation," Sam suggested.

"Perhaps Frasier will let him out to play for a bit."

Doctor Frasier did allow Daniel to the briefing on the condition that it was kept short and he stayed in a wheelchair. Glad that he had been allowed to be involved, Daniel chose not to argue. He also wasn't in a big hurry to exert himself, though he didn't admit that part. "So, what's happening?" he asked when they had all assembled.

"Oh, the replicators have decided to invade our galaxy," Jack said lightly. "There's tons of galaxies out there in the universe, right Sam?"

"Right, there's hundreds of millions."

"So why this one?"

"I think it might be personal, Jack."

"Personal. In what way?" Jack wondered.

"Well, Fifth may lead an army of incredibly advanced machines but deep down he's emotionally immature, like an adolescent boy... and... he has... feelings for me," Sam admitted with embarrassment.

"Fifth's coming?" Daniel asked. "That must be what Oma meant."

"And what did the blessed Oma Desala tell you this time, Daniel?"

"The fifth one is coming for revenge. To stop him, you must trust the new one in the form of a friend," Daniel quoted.

"Ahh… it looks like Oma was right. We were just contacted by a replicator Fifth created in Sam's image. Perhaps because of his little crush?"

"I imagine so," Sam agreed uncomfortably.

"And Oma wants us to trust her – it – in order to stop Fifth?"

"That's what she told me," Daniel confirmed.

Teal'c looked concerned. "Replicators have never before attempted to impersonate a specific individual. This represents a significant new threat to security."

Sam nodded in agreement. "It could be a problem off-world, but our scans would detect them if they tried to come through the Gate," she theorised.

" Well, we've got the disrupter: I say we give her what she wants," Jack suggested, quite willing to destroy a replicator who came willingly.

Sam wasn't so eager. "I think that might be a little hasty, Jack."

"You're right, destroying her doesn't help us stop Fifth. And it's not really 'trusting' her, is it?" Daniel said, backing Sam up.

"Then what do you suggest, Sam?"

"I-I'm not saying we don't do it. I'm just suggesting that we talk to her first. If Fifth really is coming to this galaxy, she could provide us with valuable intelligence. I mean, it's pretty clear they've had some kind of falling out. We could use that to our advantage."

"Unless it is a ruse," Teal'c wisely added.

"If something goes wrong, we pull the trigger," said Sam confidently. "Either way, I think we need to meet her face to face."

Jack didn't like that idea one bit. "There's no way I'm lettin' her on the base."

"We could use the alpha site. Skeleton crew, security personnel only."

"And me," Cynthia added. "Perhaps I can find a way to hack into the replicators and take control. They must have some way of communicating, right?"

"Well they do have a subspace link to share information, but…"

"Great, do you have some sort of subspace communication device?"

"I have a spare Tok'ra communicator in my lab, but…"

"Great, if I hook that up to my laptop and…"

"Cynthia, you can't come off-world. It's too dangerous."

"Mom! You're going. And it's not like we're going to hostile territory or anything like that."

"No, but replicators are dangerous. Fifth… mentally tortured me."

"But this is a replicator made to be like you. And besides, she won't even know I'm there."

"That's no reason to trust her," Jack put in. "And if something goes wrong, it doesn't matter if she knows you're there or not."

"You're missing out on a chance to take control of _all_ the replicators," Cynthia told him.

"That's not worth risking your safety, sweetie."

"You don't think I can do it? I've thought a lot about how to program self-assembling machines."

"You might be able to do it, but there's no way of knowing for sure.'

"If I can't, we zap her with that disrupter you mentioned. C'mon, Dad. Pleeeeeease?" She turned the full force of her big blue eyes on him.

Jack caved. "Alright, alright, but you'd better have a backup of everything that's on that laptop before you're taking it off-world," he ensured. "Sam, use extreme caution. Teal'c, I'm putting you in charge of the disruptor. Don't let anything happen to these two. And Daniel…"

"Yes?"

"Time for you to go back to your box."

"Box?"

"You know what I mean."

Sam still wasn't convinced. "Jack, are you sure it's a good idea to let Cynthia go off-world?"

"I'm sure it isn't, but I'm trusting the three of your to take care of yourselves." He didn't seem too happy about the decision, but he just couldn't say 'no' to his daughter.


	23. Negotiation

Chapter 23 - Negotiation

Note: while there are many lines from Gemini, I haven't included every scene or detail from the episode, to avoid repetition and so I can focus on the original parts.

Cynthia watched as the stargate activated before her. While she'd been closer to an activating stargate (of sorts) before, this time she was actually going through it. Just knowing this was incredibly exciting and was one of the reasons she had been so eager to go on this mission.

After informing the alpha site personnel of their plans, they were ready to step though. Sam offered her hand and Cynthia took it eagerly. "I can hardly believe I'm about to be transported to another planet!" she enthused. "Now I'll know what it feels like for the gerbils."

"It's a pretty wild ride," Sam told her. "Just remember that you don't need to breathe in before stepping in. It's not actually water."

Cynthia stepped forward and touched the event horizon with her free hand. "It feels like the smaller ones, but a lot more powerful."

"Ready, Cynthia?"

"I'm ready, Mom." They stepped through together. Jack watched sadly as they vanished and the gate shut down.

The mother and daughter appeared at the alpha site shortly after. Cynthia looked like she had enjoyed it, but she was also rather dizzy and had trouble walking for a minute. Sam lead her into a room. "You can set up on this table. I'll set up a video feed from the interrogation room so we can both watch the replicator without needing to be with her. If you want to talk, click your radio twice and I'll get here as soon as I can without making her suspicious. Click three times if it's urgent."

"Two to talk, three if urgent. Got it." Cynthia removed her new laptop bag from her shoulder and started unpacking so she could set up the Tok'ra communicator. She plugged her laptop in to a wall socket so it wouldn't run out of power and opened the lid. For a moment she looked at the reflection of her green BDUs in the black screen, and then powered it on.

_Some time later..._

Teal'c stood alert as the replicator disembarked from the stargate. She walked up to him without fear.

"I know you. Your name is Teal'c," she greeted him.

Teal'c disagreed. She did not actually know him. "You have been given Samantha Carter's memories."

"Yes."

He wished to make his position absolutely clear. "But you are not Samantha Carter." He nodded to a doorway behind her and instructed, "That way."

"You're not going to use the weapon?" the replicator asked, acting as if she wished him to do so.

"Colonel Carter wishes to speak with you first, but know this: if you make one false move, I will destroy you."

The replicator walked as directed, with Teal'c close behind. When they were seated she said, "You may be interested to know that I left a gift with the MALP."

"What manner of 'gift' is this?"

"The remains of the former System Lord Ba'al."

"You killed Ba'al?" asked the same voice.

The replicator saw no one else in the room, only a camera. "We're not going to speak face to face?" She seemed disappointed.

"For the moment, this will have to be good enough," her human double answered. "Did you really kill Ba'al?"

"I did. I also discovered that he was working for Anubis, though he intended to betray him."

"Anubis? That's bad news? But why go after Ba'al, particularly?

"Because of what he did to Colonel O'Neill," the replicator lied.

"Actually, Jack was promoted to general after Fifth let us go. He runs the SGC now."

"Interesting. You call him Jack now?"

"Yes. I report directly to General Hammond, so..."

"I understand. Aren't you the lucky one?"

"Enough small talk," Sam told her double. She was glad no one could see blush.

"As you wish. Actually, I thought you would shoot me the second I stepped through the Gate." In fact she expected no such thing.

In another room, Cynthia too watched the video feed. That is, she listened to the voices and occasionally glanced at the images. It was a little disturbing to hear a conversation between two people with the same voice, especially when one sounded creepily cold.

No subspace transmissions had been detected yet, so the genius had no real data to work with. As she waited she reviewed some of her old programs and wrote a few routines she thought would be useful. The interrogation seemed to be going well until she heard the replicator reveal that Fifth had found a way to counteract the disruptor weapon.

Moments later, Sam arrived to talk to her. "Did you catch that?"

"About the disruptor immunity? Yeah, that's bad."

"Any luck?"

"No, she doesn't seem to be using the subspace link. If you can get her to do that or somehow connect to the base computer system, it would be helpful."

"Perhaps I can get her to tell me how Fifth made an immunity so we can adjust the disruptor. She might need to connect to a computer to do that. She can probably interface directly, since hum-form replicators are able to physically link with human brains to extract information."

"Don't let her do that to you, or she will know I'm here. Dad wouldn't like that."

"No, and I'd better go tell him what's going on. Good luck, Cynthia." She left to dial Earth and talk to Jack.

Cynthia continued coding and watching Teal'c attempt to interrogate her mother's double. She groaned when she heard that the replicator had separated itself from the subspace connection, since that would make her task much more difficult. The surprising thing was that the machine seemed to be goading Teal'c into destroying it. Perhaps it really did want to be destroyed, which would be a pity, as it would remove any chance of learning how to hack into the link or how to make the disruptor weapon work.

Fortunately Sam interrupted before Teal'c could carry out his threat. "Teal'c, wait. Stop for a second," she ordered him. She looked at her double and said, "You don't wanna do this."

"We both know there's no other way for this to end," the replicator replied, fishing for a particular response.

"That's not true," Sam argued, knowing it was, but hoping she could keep the replicator intact for long enough to learn something from her.

" Now you're lying to me the way you lied to Fifth."

"You're not like him. I can see that," Sam answered untruthfully.

"You don't understand. You don't know what he did to me."

"Then make me understand. Tell me," Sam requested.

"He… he forced me to mentally break with my old life to show my loyalty to him." The replicator shuddered at the memory.

"How? What did he do?"

"He put me through virtual simulations of the SGC."

"Simulations of what? Leaving everyone?"

"No… I had to… to kill them all." The copy of Sam was trembling, her face anguished.

"Fifth… he's a monster!" Sam declared.

Her double nodded. "Now you see why I can't go back to him or let him find me."

"No, you can't," Sam agreed. "But we can protect you if you help us."

"What do you mean? There's no way to stop him."

"Actually, there is. If you tell us exactly how he modified himself and the other replicators we can make the disruptor work again." Sam hoped this would be an offer her double could not refuse.

The replicator wasn't so sure. "Even if I did, you can't stop a ship with that."

"The Asgard have developed a system of disrupter satellites that can deploy the beam in space. It's your only chance to get out of this," Sam explained.

" I want you to destroy me. I can't help you destroy all the others."

"Yes, you can. He doesn't control you, not any more. Once we do this, you won't need to fear him ever again."

"I… I need some time to think about it," the replicator admitted.

"Then I'll leave you to consider your options. Whatever happens, we won't let Fifth get to you, but you have the chance of destroying him and saving everyone." Sam walked out, leaving Teal'c on guard duty. She checked in on Cynthia to see if her work had progressed.

"Still nothing," Cynthia said without looking up. "Hopefully I'll get enough data when she helps fix the disruptor."

"We'll see. Just don't let her find out what you're doing, or she might not help us with the disruptor."

"I'll be careful, Mom." The teen looked up and then back at the screen. "Hang on… I'm getting an anomaly. There isn't a detectable signal, but there's something statistically different in the background noise. It as if there's an extremely low power wideband transmission. There's no way for this equipment to pick it up, but if I sum all the frequencies, there's something here."

"Do you think she's trying to transmit without being detected?" Sam suggested.

Cynthia shrugged. "There's no way of knowing for sure. I'll work on it, okay?"

"Good luck." Sam returned to the interrogation room to see if the replicator had accepted her offer.

Cynthia listened as her mother and the machine made in her image discussed the disruptor technology and how to make it work again. While most of the discussion was either beyond her knowledge or irrelevant history, she was pleased to hear that the replicator would be forced to access the required information through the subspace link. Not only was there a risk that Fifth would find his runaway toy, but there was a high possibility that she could make use of the link for her own ends.

Now that she had a working plan, Sam reported back to Jack. "There's a subspace link between all replicators, like a wireless internet connection. If she taps into it she should be able to access the cipher and make the disruptor work against Fifth. Cynthia should also be able to take advantage of the active link to look for a way of taking control.

"She'll also be giving away her position to Fifth," Jack pointed out.

"It'll take some time for Fifth to detect her presence on the link. If she can isolate the correct program first, or Cynthia can do her thing first…"

"Those are big 'if's."

"It's risky, Sir, Jack, I realise that, but I think it's the only way. While we're waiting for her to find the cipher, we can run a few tests on the unmodified disrupter. We need to analyse the energy output so we can create a modulation program, and we need the Asgard to send us a disrupter satellite as soon as possible."

"I've already talked to 'em, as soon as we heard the reps were coming. It'll be there in thirty minutes... or it's free!"

"I will use an F-302 to place a satellite in orbit," volunteered Teal'c, who had left the disruptor with an SF.

"Alright. I hope you guys know what you're doin'. Take good care of our daughter. Oh, and we checked the planet she came from, with the MALP. There was a body which definitely looks like Ba'al. I sent a team to check it out and make sure it's not one of those horses Daniel keeps warning me about."

"Horses? You mean a Trojan Horse," Sam realised.

"Something like that. He said something about 'beware geeks baring gifts'."

"That's Greeks, Jack."

"Perhaps, but you and your double aren't Greeks."

"Jack, are you saying we're geeks?"

"I'm saying to be very careful, even if Daniel says Oma thinks we should trust her."

"I'll be careful, Sir." She gave a smart salute and a wide smile before the wormhole shut down.

When RepliCarter – the name with which Cynthia mentally christened the machine – began searching for the cipher, the teen genius finally received the flood of data she'd been hoping for. She immediately began running it through filters, examining its structure, and adapting her programs to search more intelligently. There was a lot more data than even her high-end (and significantly modified) laptop could store, but her mother had let her use a redundant high-speed storage drive to keep the most potentially useful data. What she didn't realise was that RepliCarter was not actually searching for anything, she was merely pulling down random chunks of data in case anyone was monitoring her.

As she worked, Sam and RepliCarter – under Teal'c supervision – set about analysing the disruptor weapon's output, so they would be able to calibrate it once the cipher was obtained. After taking careful readings of the disruptor beam, they were interrupted by an unscheduled off-world activation. Fortunately, a signal was received and recognised as the Asgard.

"Teal'c, we need that satellite deployed as soon as possible," Sam told the Jaffa.

"Indeed. Sergeant." Teal'c handed the disruptor over to the SF.

Sam was a little uncomfortable that it was necessary to continue threatening her double, considering that she seemed to welcome her own destruction, but she knew Jack would not be pleased if she let down her guard. Also, Cynthia's presence demanded absolute caution, even if she did partly trust the replicator. Little did she know that her time was running out.


	24. Struggle

Chapter 24 - Struggle

Although Cynthia was having a very interesting time, it was not very productive. She had to keep herself from wasting time reading parts of the replicator knowledge-base. She could be there for years just looking through what she'd already accessed, and that was without trying to understand it all.

Fortunately she didn't need to read or understand very much of it. Once she'd understood the general structure of the data, her computer could process it at a much higher rate and discard everything obviously useless. The problem was that there was not very much information that would actually be useful for her task. This was rather discouraging.

Outside, the satellite arrived without trouble. This was slightly comforting, but it wouldn't help if neither her nor RepliCarter's plan worked. If Fifth showed up too soon, they were all dead, and those on Earth would likely be next.

At that point, a new problem arose. RepliCarter became distracted, as if something had worried her.

"What is it?" Sam asked in concern.

"He's found me. He's on his way."

"What about the cipher? Did you find it yet?" Sam hoped for at least a little good news.

"No, I'm still searching."

"How much time do we have?"

"At maximum speed, he'll be here in less than two hours," RepliCarter warned.

"I need to update Jack. Keep working; I'll be back shortly.

Her double nodded, but in fact she had her own update to give to Fifth.

In the alpha site gate-room, Sam and Teal'c had dialled Earth. "O'Neill, the satellite has arrived and is ready for deployment."

"Great news, T. How's bug-girl doing?"

"She's still looking, but Fifth has found her and will be here in less than two hours."

Jack was not pleased. "I'm pulling the plug. Finish off bug-girl and evacuate the base."

"It's too late for that, Sir," Sam argued.

"Carter!"

"If he comes here and finds nothing, he's not just gonna turn around and leave the galaxy," she explained.

Jack didn't agree. "He's tracking her, zeroing in on her position."

"It's only part of why he's coming. Think about it: what do replicators do? They seek out high level civilisations and consume their technology."

"The Goa'uld," Teal'c put in succinctly.

Sam nodded. "Exactly. A race that uses all kinds of advanced technology culled from multiple sources, including the Ancients. It's like a banquet for the replicators. Once they're in this galaxy, they're not goin' anywhere. Now, if she can isolate the cipher soon, we may still have time to remodulate the disrupter. And don't count Cynthia out yet either."

"I'll give you one hour. One."

"Thank you, Sir. Jack." She turned to Teal'c and said before leaving, "I'd better get back to the lab."

"I will deploy the satellite," Teal'c announced. He turned to leave.

Jack interrupted before the Jaffa could get far. "T. Hold on a second."

Teal'c turned back and waited for Sam to depart. "Proceed, O'Neill."

"I need you to be perfectly honest with me. Is Sam letting herself get too involved in this one?"

"Colonel Carter and the replicator share thoughts and memories. It is understandable that a certain... sympathy would develop between them," Teal'c stated.

That could be a problem. "Can't have that."

"However, I do not believe Colonel Carter would allow these feelings to interfere with commission of her duties," Teal'c added.

"Fair enough," Jack agreed. "But when the time comes, I want you to finish the job."

"Understood." Teal'c left for the 302 bay. Meanwhile, Cynthia put the finishing touches on a little program she'd developed and uploaded it to all accessible computers.

Sam joined RepliCarter, who appeared to be concentrating, in the lab and announced. "Alright, we're running out of time. We need that…" RepliCarter raised her hand to stop Sam from speaking. "What is it?" Sam asked, moving closer.

"I found the cipher. I'm downloading it now from the subspace link." She briefly closed her eyes, and then stood. "I have it."

Sam was very pleased at this news. "We need to load it into the base mainframe."

"It'll require about three terabytes of memory," the replicator figured.

"That shouldn't be a problem, but how do you plan to input the data?" Sam wondered.

"Directly," RepliCarter answered. She turned and slowly pushed her hand into a nearby computer.

"Right!" Sam was relieved that the plan to stop Fifth seemed to be working on schedule, and also knew that now that the replicator had interfaced with a computer, there was a chance Cynthia might find her own final solution. As if her mind was being read, Sam's radio clicked twice. "Keep working on it. I need to see to Teal'c," she lied.

Cynthia looked up when she heard her mother's approach. "Mom, I've got bad news and good news."

"The bad?"

"I'm not certain, but the data RepliCarter downloaded doesn't seem to be a cipher."

"RepliCarter? Jack calls her 'bug-girl'."

Cynthia shrugged. "What do you call her?"

"The metal me?" Sam suggested.

"Nah, I like mine better. Anyhow, I don't think she really has a cipher, but there's no way of knowing whether I'd recognise one when I saw it. But on the good side, when she interfaced with the base computer, she triggered a program I uploaded which snagged me a portion of her operating code. Now I have a very good chance at implementing a way to take control."

"That's great news. As for the cipher, I don't know why she would lie about that. If she wanted Fifth to destroy us, why come here at all? She could have just said nothing, and we'd be in the same situation," Sam supposed.

"You're right, I'm probably wrong about it not being a cipher. It's not like it needs a label on it saying 'this is the cipher'."

"I hope so. See what you can come up with, and I'll take care of Teal'c."

"Take care, Mom."

"You too, Cynthia."

After the satellite was successfully deployed, RepliCarter was escorted to Sam in the control room. "The deployment went well, I take it?" the former asked.

"That's right. We did our part."

"And I've done mine."

"You've finished the calculations?" Sam was relieved at this news.

"The modulation is complete. With this program, you should be able to destroy any replicators you encounter," her double told her.

There was one problem though. "There's no way to test it."

"If I had more time, I could run a series of simulations, but you'd never really know for sure until you tried to use it." This was fortunate for her, since it didn't work and she had no intention of using it. As she said this, Fifth's ship dropped out of hyperspace near the planet.

Alone in her own room, Cynthia had come to the conclusion that gaining full control of a replicator was too complex a task to figure out in the time available. However, it might be possible to find a way to interrupt the execution of their programming, and this would take far less code. The catch would be finding a way to upload it to a replicator cell and then actually get the code to execute immediately. There must be a way, she just had to spot it and apply it.

In the control room, Teal'c had returned. He and Sam were watching the technician work on the satellite uplink. "Uplink initiated," Sam read. "There's a lot of data. It'll probably take about fifteen minutes to remodulate the satellite."

"Proximity alert," the technician announced with concern.

Teal'c moved to another console where he could see what the problem was. "Long range scanners picked up a ship on course for this base," he read.

"Analysing energy signature. We've got something here but I don't know what it is," the Technician told them.

Sam realised what was happening. "I do. It's a Replicator ship."

RepliCarter appeared to be worried by this news. "He got here sooner than I thought."

"The weapon will not become effective in time," Teal'c stated meaningfully.

"I know." Sam activated communications from one of the other control consoles. "All personnel, begin evacuation procedures immediately. Repeat: begin evacuation." Then she instructed the technician, "We need to download the modulation program into a portable drive and erase everything else."

"Yes, ma'am," he agreed.

"What of the replicator?" asked Teal'c, implying that her time was up.

"We're taking her with us," Sam answered, wanting to give Cynthia more time to complete her plan.

Teal'c requested the disruptor back from the SF who had been holding it, and aimed it at RepliCarter.

"Teal'c, what are you doing?" Sam demanded.

"We cannot bring her to Earth."

Sam interposed herself between Teal'c and her double. "Teal'c," she said disapprovingly.

"We have the modulation program," he pointed out.

"But we haven't tested it. What if Fifth alters the cipher when he figures out what we were trying to do here?" And there was a chance it was phony, but she didn't want to admit that suspicion in front of the replicator.

"O'Neill would never allow a human form replicator access to Stargate Command," Teal'c told her.

"Yes he would, if he knew what was at stake." Sam actually doubted he would, even for the sake of Cynthia's plan, but every second she stalled was a second gained for her daughter to work. As she considered the situation, RepliCarter furtively pressed a button on the closest console.

A technician snapped her out of her musings. "Colonel Carter."

Sam looked and realised that the weapon was activating. "What are you doing?" she asked, turning to her duplicate.

"What I came here to do," the other Sam answered coldly.

Sam checked the screen again. "She fired the weapon," she confirmed.

"Colonel, the replicator ship is breaking up," the technician reported.

'Bug-girl' smiled in satisfaction.

Cynthia was close to implementing a possible solution when she heard what was happening in the control room, thanks to the security system linkup she'd been given. She immediately realised the implications. RepliCarter hadn't downloaded the cipher because there wasn't a cipher. This meant the modulation program was just a ruse. But since she'd wilfully destroyed Fifth's ship, she couldn't be working with him. So where did that leave the situation? Cynthia wasn't quite sure. She only knew it would be good if her plan worked, and likely very bad if it didn't.

In the control room, everyone was looking at the computer screen in confusing. "The ship has been destroyed," Teal'c announced, in case anyone had not noticed the same thing.

"That's impossible. Did we finish the upload?"

"Not even close," the technician answered the lieutenant colonel.

Sam looked at her double questioningly.

"You were right about one thing, Colonel. I was never working with Fifth, though he didn't know it," the replicator answered.

Cynthia started to figure out what RepliCarter had really been up to. She watched as her mother started typing at a console. When Teal'c fired the disrupter beam at the replicator, the teen was not surprised that it had no effect. It was a good thing she'd been able to deploy her trap, but it remained to be seen if it would actually work.

In the control room, Teal'c attempted clubbing the devious bug with the disrupter, but she easily stopped him and tossed him across the room. The technician tried rushing her, but his attempt met the same end. Next Sam found herself ripped away from the console and dropped into another world: the mind of her inorganic duplicate.

"That's better. Now we can take our time and have a little talk. Of course, only a few seconds will pass in the real world," she told Sam.

"Why did you bring me here?" Sam wanted to know.

"I wanted to thank you. You gave me the opportunity to study the disrupter, and that allowed me to make myself immune to its effects."

Sam finally understood. "There never was a cipher."

"Until now. I've already begun uploading it into the link. Soon, all my brethren will have the new program and they will be unstoppable."

Sam was horrified. "And you'll be their leader."

"That's right," the other Sam replied, pleased with herself.

Sam continued her new understanding of the situation. "So this whole thing was a set-up. You just wanted to get rid of Fifth."

RepliCarter nodded with an expression of distaste. "Fifth was pathetic. And to think he expected us to love him."

Sam was a little more compassionate. "Fifth was flawed, and if I had to destroy him, I would, but..."

"But what?" her double questioned. "You feel sorry for him? Don't bother. He was never fit to lead an army, and he certainly wasn't fit to rule this galaxy."

"But you are?" Her question was just as much about herself.

"I am what I am because of you," was the answer.

Sam disagreed. "Not me. You're what Fifth made you."

"You have untapped greatness inside you, Sam, but you're limited by your own fears. You play by the rules, you do as you're told, and you deny yourself your own desires."

"Perhaps. But by playing by the rules, I eventually got what I wanted without guilt or consequences," Sam replied, referring to the situation with Jack. "But that's irrelevant. What I'd like to know is how you fooled Oma Desala."

"Finding Daniel Jackson was a lucky coincidence. While I would have liked to get at the Ancient knowledge buried in his head, I decided it would be more useful to use him to help you want to trust me."

"You mean you planted the vision of Oma?"

"I did, and I learned a lot from Daniel. For instance, he knew nothing of you being taken out of Jack's chain of command. Why did you keep that from him? Or have you been lying to me?"

"Actually, it only happened yesterday, after Daniel returned to us," Sam admitted.

"Well I'd love to stay and chat, but the galaxy awaits."

"We will stop you," Sam told her.

"You're forgetting: I know exactly how your mind works. I know what you're going to do before you even think of it." The pair were released back into the real world. "You set the naquadah generators to overload; trying to blow up the base before I can leave." RepliCarter plunged her hand into the keyboard and the base power went dead, causing confusing among the technicians.

Sam had actually done no such thing, as she knew there was no chance that Cynthia had escaped yet, and she'd rather let the replicator escape than risk her daughter. She was momentarily pleased that her double was not aware of this, because it meant there was still a mind the replicator could not anticipated. However, the moment of satisfaction ended when she was violently backhanded to the floor.

Cynthia was frantic. The first part of her plan had succeeded. When RepliCarter had interfaced with the computer system a second time, a very minor programming update had installed itself. The tiny code routine would sit inert unless specifically activated, since there was no easy way to directly run code from a networked connection, and all the critical replicator code paths seemed to be closely guarded by safety checks.

While that in of itself was good news, the problem was the activation method. In order to trigger the modified subroutine, which itself was an error handler, she had to send a specific badly-formed subspace signal. And to do that, she had to use the Tok'ra communicator. The problem was that it's power cell had been taken out for some other experiment, so it had been powered by the main base power circuit, which was now dead.

Hoping it ran on low voltage, she took a pair of wire cutters to a USB cable and twisted the appropriate wires around what seemed to be the correct metal contacts inside the communicator. Nothing happened.

In the gate room, the technicians noticed the stargate coming back online. As alarms sounded, they looked around to see RepliCarter walking into the room. The SFs started shooting at her, but she effortlessly repaired the damage. One tried whacking her as she approached, but she easily threw him aside. She waited for the other SFs to tire of firing at her before beating them up as well. When there was no more resistance she hand-linked a keyboard, restoring partial power and turning some lights on.

Cynthia had tried wiring together two USB cables to try drawing more power, but the communicator still did not activate. She was getting rather frustrated, especially as she had to work by the insufficient lighting of her laptop. This situation improved when the light over her head lit up. None of the power socket were working, as they were on a different circuit, but at least she could see.

RepliCarter moved to another console and linked her hand with the keyboard. The stargate immediately activated. As Sam and Teal'c dashed into the room, she walked towards the 'gate. Her attackers split up: Teal'c rushing directly for her and Sam heading for the dialling computers. Teal'c caught her at the top of the steps by hurling himself directly at her. She was knocked down briefly, but she immediately kicked him away and began to step through the event horizon.

Cynthia's room was again dark. She'd switched off the light and removed the bulb, so she could attach wires directly to the socket. Once she'd wired it up to the communicator, she flicked the switch and the device finally lit up. Now she could try sending the signal.

Teal'c succeeded in clutching RepliCarter's arm before she finished entering the wormhole. He started tugging her back into the gate-room, but once she was far enough out to gain leverage, she was about to pull back against him. He hung on relentlessly, knowing he must not allow her to escape. "Disengage the wormhole!" he shouted, hoping the replicator might meet the same fate as the Goa'uld-infested Kawalsky.

RepliCarter understood her perilous situation, and elected to vanish into the wormhole, leaving her rapidly-disintegrating arm behind her.


	25. Assistance

Chapter 25 - Assistance

Note: this took longer to write than I expected. Midnight has arrived!

As the wormhole automatically disengaged, Teal'c examined the remains of RepliCarter's arm. A pile of individual replicator cells were scattered on the floor, along with an intact hand. "Colonel Carter, the replicator does not appear to have entirely escaped." He held up the hand for her to examine.

Sam looked to see what the Jaffa was holding and recoiled when she realised what it was. "That's... disturbing." She half expected it to try grabbing her by the neck. "She must have deactivated the cells she left behind, to prevent me from studying them, but something seems to have interrupted the process. Perhaps because the stargate shut down."

"I am uncertain whether that was the case," said Teal'c, who hadn't seen precisely when the disintegration stopped.

Sam's radio clicked twice. "Hang on to that, Teal'c. I need to see what's up with Cynthia." She hurried out of the gate-room, leaving Teal'c warily holding RepliCarter's hand.

"Careful, it's dark in here and there's live wires," Cynthia warned when she heard footsteps approaching. "What's happening? The camera's are still down."

"She escaped, but we still have a hand intact."

"A... hand?"

"Teal'c had her by the arm, so she detached it and tried deactivating the cells. Most of them did, but the hand stayed together."

"Great, that means my plan worked in time!" Cynthia exclaimed.

"What did you do?"

"Patched her code when she interfaced with the computer to shut down the lights. It altered an error handler that runs when an invalid subspace signal is received."

"Altered it how?"

"Just a minor change that sends it into an infinite loop. Any replicator cell that runs that code will basically freeze in its current state. Sneaky, huh?"

"It sure is. What about the rest of her body? And why are wires connected to the light socket?"

"Sorry about that, I had to find power to run the communicator somehow."

Sam nodded. "If it works, it works. I'd just rather you turned if off now that it's done it's job."

Cynthia obliged by turning off the light-switch and pulling the wires loose. "I just hope the cells don't automatically reboot themselves now that the signal has been removed," she mused as she replaced the light-bulb.

A panicked expression crossed her mother's face just as Teal'c was heard shouting, "Colonel Carter!" She sprinted back to gate room to find the Jaffa holding a silver ball with a rather disconcerted expression.

"Is that the... hand?"

"Indeed." Teal'c looked like he feared it might explode.

Cynthia strolled into the gate room, wearing a cheeky grin. "Did I mention that I made the error handler alter the startup code to attract nearby cells with moderate force and do nothing else?"

"No, you didn't mention that," Sam replied disapprovingly.

"Oops." Cynthia obviously wasn't really sorry. "I assume the same thing happened to RepliCarter once she left the wormhole."

"We can only hope. But she didn't leave any way for us to determine where she went."

"We should inform O'Neill and recall medical staff to assist the injured," suggested Teal'c, putting first things first.

"You dial, and I'll restore full power to the base," Sam ordered. "Cynthia, take the replicator ball from Teal'c and stay in my sight."

Cynthia did as she was told, though she would have preferred to return to her 'lab' and test out her new acquisition. Sam rebooted the dialling computer and made sure nothing had been done to it while Teal'c checked on the wounded. Once she had declared it safe, he dialled the SGC and Sam set about fixing the rest of the base power. The communications systems were still down, so Teal'c sent through his IDC before speaking speaking through his radio. "O'Neill, it is I."

"Teal'c. What's going on?"

"Things have calmed down. Fifth's ship was destroyed and the replicator in the form of Colonel Carter seems to have been deactivated."

"So you got the satellite up and found a way to make it work again? Good work."

"That is not what occurred. Fifth in fact had no defence against the disruptor weapon. We were lead to believe he did so that the replicator in the form..."

"Bug-girl," Jack told him.

"Bug-girl pretended to be finding a way to combat Fifth's cipher, when she was in fact creating one of her own. Fifth, believing we thought our weapon to be ineffective, and expecting to receive the cipher, approached the planet. At this point, Bug-girl fired the satellite upon his ship destroying him. She then attempted to flee this base, slightly injuring several airmen. Before she could make a 'clean getaway', Cynthia succeeded in rendering her inert. Most of Bug-girl's body was able to travel through the stargate, but Cynthia believes it will have been rendered inoperable."

"You mean she betrayed everyone?"

"Indeed."

"I'm not really surprised. Now I get to tell Danny that Oma was wrong. Are Carter and Cynthia alright?"

"Colonel Carter was once knocked to the floor, while Cynthia remained secluded. They are currently restoring power to the base. Rather, Colonel Carter is, while Cynthia is remaining in her sight at all times." At that point, the control console lit up and video communication became possible. Teal'c moved into the correct location for this.

"Ahh, there you are, in one piece too. If you shut the gate down, I can send the alpha site people back through so the wounded can be seen to properly." The general saw a couple of blonde heads pop up behind Teal'c. "Ahh, Sam and Cynthia. Good to see you're both alright." In fact he was extremely relieved and impatient for them to return. "I'll send the 'alpha staff' back to you now, and then you can get back here and tell Thor what happened."

"We could do with my reversal program right about now," Cynthia chimed in.

"You're not touching our dialling computers without Sam around to look at every... byte," Jack told her. She looked disappointed.

"Shutting down the wormhole. See you soon, Sir." Sam entered the appropriate command and waited for Jack – or Walter, to be precise – to return the call. As the alpha site personnel began to return, she heard several metallic thumps behind her. "What was that?"

Cynthia picked up three metallic balls she'd dropped and let them collapse back into one blob. "Juggling isn't as easy as it looks," she declared.

Sam shook her head in bemusement at the girl's antics. "Give that to me. It's dangerous."

The teen reluctantly handed over the substance. "Can I go back to my laptop until we're ready to leave?"

Sam considered the matter. "I should be ready to leave in about twenty minutes, so I guess you might as well make use of the time. Just no live wires this time, okay?"

"No live wires. I promise." Cynthia skipped back to the room she'd been assigned and began restoring the Tok'ra communicator back to it's original configuration. Once it was working normally, she pulled a small shiny blob out of her pocket.

Half an hour later, at the SGC, Jack watched as a MALP was sent back to the planet Bug-girl had first contacted them from. Sam had a hunch she might have landed a ship on that planet, so it might be where she had fled to. Currently, both Sam and Cynthia were in the infirmary, being cleared form their trip off-world. Jack had decided to wait until they'd been cleared and fed before contacting Thor, as it would be best if the three of them explained the situation together. Teal'c had already been cleared.

"MALP is on its way," Walter called. "Receiving telemetry. It's light now... but no signs of replicator presence."

"Set it to record and we'll check up on it before sending someone to bring it back in an hour," Jack ordered. It was disappointing that nothing had been found, but he figured the replicator was smart enough not to contact them from the same planet as she'd left her ship.

After an hour and a half, SG-1 (and Cynthia) had finished debriefing. Daniel was returned to his infirmary bed somewhat annoyed that he'd been used as part of a replicator trap. Teal'c had retired to his room to meditate.

Jack activated the communication stone Thor had left him. "Hey, Thor, it's Jack O'Neill here. If you can spare some time to talk, we'd like to thank you for that satellite – it was quite useful – and ask for some help in finding the remaining replicators. And there's someone I'd like you to meet."

"Now what?" Cynthia asked.

"Now we wait. He might come through the 'gate, or perhaps he has his ship in the area already, in which case he'll either beam himself down or beam us... up," Jack finished, finding himself no longer where he'd been when he started the sentence. "Hey, Thor buddy!"

"Greetings, Jack O'Neill and Samantha Carter. It is good to see that you were not harmed by the replicator known as Fifth. But who is the third?"

"I'm Cynthia," the girl answered shyly. "It's nice to meet you, Thor."

"You greatly resemble both O'Neill and Carter," Thor observed.

Cynthia nodded. "They're my parents."

"That is most interesting. I was not aware that they had offspring, especially of such an age."

"Neither was I, until recently. But that's not why we're here. Fifth was destroyed by the disruptor, and Cynthia thinks the replicator double of Sam has been deactivated, but we don't know where she is," Jack explained.

"How was the replicator deactivated?" Thor queried.

"I altered the code of the replicator cells so that now they do nothing apart from stick to each other, though the rest of their programming is still intact, just unreachable."

"Interesting. How were you able to achieve this state?" Cynthia gave a detailed explanation of how she'd succeeded in 'hacking' the replicators, causing her father to look completely lost. "If you are able to provide me with some of the disabled material, I should be able to use their subspace link to locate all the other replicators," Thor offered, after considering the matter.

"I left it at the alpha site for safe keeping," Sam told the grey alien.

"Excellent. We can be there in a few minutes."

After a short trip, the replicator material that had formerly been a hand was now on Thor's ship. "I see what you did here. It is quite effective in stopping the replicators from doing anything to change their situation. I can reprogram a few to locate the rest, and since these are immune to the disruptor, it should be possible to analyse them to make it work against any remaining replicator cells or blocks."

"If there are any active replicators, will they be able to find us?" Sam asked.

"Since these are active, it will make no difference. A problem would only arise if I allowed these cells to receive arbitrary information from the subspace link and incorporate it into their programming."

"Alright, let's see how many bugs are left," Jack encouraged.

Soon Thor had a map of the galaxy showing where the replicators were located. "Apart from the cells, here, they are all on one planet. There is a sphere of human form replicator cells in front of the stargate, and a large sphere of replicator blocks about two of your miles distant. It's mass appears to be equivalent to that of a small replicator ship."

"It looks like the ship was affected by your 'virus'," Sam noted to Cynthia. "How is that possible?"

Cynthia shrugged. "Perhaps RepliCarter spread it to the others through the link?"

"Of course! It must have been sent as she was sending them the anti-disruptor cipher."

Thor nodded in agreement. "In this case, it will be easy to rid ourselves of the remaining threat. But while the ship's computer searches for a useful modulation program, I have a request to make."

"Ask away," Jack told his friend.

"As I have mentioned previously, the Asgard race cannot survive much longer with our current duplication techniques. We had hoped you would provide a solution, O'Neill, but you were not quite advanced enough."

"Yeah, I've heard all this. Wait... are you suggesting that Cynthia might be the 'missing link' to solve your cloning problem?"

"That is what I wish to find out, with your permissions."

"Uhh... I don't think so. I don't want any clones made of my daughter."

"I have no such intention. I merely wish to study her genetic structure in order to find what we are missing. Cynthia would experience no discomfort."

"I'm still not exactly hot about the idea."

"What of Colonel Carter?"

"I'm not too keen on it myself, but I think it should be up to Cynthia," Sam answered.

"There is no compulsion. You owe the Asgard nothing and we will think no less of you if you choose not to allow this. I only ask for a chance to save my race from extinction."

"When you put it that way... what do you think, Cynthia?" Jack asked.

Cynthia smiled. "I really don't mind helping in this way, but I can only agree under one condition."

Sam was nearly afraid to ask. "What's that?"

Cynthia's answer was a single word. "Atlantis."


	26. Starting Point

Chapter 26 – Starting Point

"Cynthia, are you saying you'll let my favourite alien allies go extinct if we don't let you go on a field trip? Jack asked cleverly.

"Uh…" She hadn't thought of it that way. "That does sound a bit over the top," she admitted. "Alright, I'll let Thor… what is it you need to do?"

"I shall simply place this scanner on your arm," Thor replied.

"I'll let Thor scan me, but we'll talk about Atlantis later," Cynthia conceded. It was an important issue for her, but it could wait until attempting to save an advanced alien race.

"I and all the Asgard thank you." Thor took out a rounded triangular device and held it to the teen's arm, resulting in humming and beeps. After a count of ten, he switched it off and checked his computer. "The scan is complete. It will take some time before we know if it is what we need, and even then, it will only be a starting point for a final solution."

"What about the disruptor modulation?" Sam wondered.

"It is not yet ready. I recommend I return you to your planet as there is no reason for you to wait."

"Alright, but I expect a nice movie of those bugs falling to bits," Jack told the grey alien.

"Very well. I understand that you would find such an event entertaining," said the Asgard knowingly.

"Yup, entertaining is exactly what it is," Jack pleasantly agreed.

"Thor?" Sam asked. "I was wondering if you might grand a small request."

"Speak, Samantha."

"Could I keep a small portion of the active human-form replicator cells for experimentation? The SGC science team may be able to use them to develop technology to fight the Goa'uld."

"That would be most unwise. Replicators are extremely dangerous. I would not want to see Earth come to any harm."

Jack raised his hand. "Hey Thor, remember which race found a way to freeze those things? Does 'human' ring any bells?"

Thor blinked. "You make a good point. As you wish, I will allow you to take a small sample, but I recommend you do not take them to Earth, and exercise extreme caution at all times."

"You can count on our caution," Sam told him.

"I am counting on it. However, I will first erase the coding that makes up the synthetic consciousness of your replicator duplicate. This will prevent her from accidentally resurfacing. It will also remove her knowledge of Asgard technology that was absorbed by the replicators when they assimilated our ships. The same will be done to the replicator elements that remain on the planet below us."

"Thanks. I think. Sam had been hoping such a precaution was not necessary. With RepliCarter erased, she was left with little more than programmable nanites.

Thor activated the correct control stones and a small amount of the replicator mass vanished. "I have returned a sample to the place you had been storing the cells. We can now return to Earth."

_Later that day, at the SGC…_

"You're sure you want to be on the Pegasus mission?"

Cynthia rolled her eyes. "Do you think I've changed my mind, Dad?"

Jack tried to look disapproving. "No eye-rolling, young lady!"

"Yes, Sir."

"Do you really think I'd let my only daughter on a dangerous mission to another galaxy?"

"Is staying on Earth really any safer?"

"I suppose not, but I can look after you here."

"I can look after myself just fine, thank-you. Remember how we only met a few days ago?" Cynthia reminded him.

"That's not the point. It's my responsibility now."

The teen tried another tactic. "Would you go, if you were allowed, Mom?"

Sam couldn't help but nod. "Definitely, but I can't, because I'm needed here."

"Well perhaps I'm needed in Pegasus."

"A certain Doctor McKay would like to think otherwise," Sam mentioned.

"Who's he?"

"Just a scientist with a big ego."

"I sense a challenge! That's all the more reason to…"

"You don't want to be making a nuisance of yourself," Jack told her.

"I won't. Unless you make me stay here."

Jack shook his head. "Threats will only get you grounded."

"Okay, I won't be a nuisance on purpose, but I'm sure I'll be miserable because of the missed opportunity."

"You'll get over it," Jack replied.

"No, I'll try to build my own way of travelling there."

"If it keeps you out of trouble…" Sam began.

"No, it will probably explode," she stated, very matter-of-fact. "I'd be much safer on Prometheus. And besides, if I'm not here, you'll have lots of time to yourselves to… adjust."

"If you're grounded you can't blow anything up, or get in the way," Jack reminded her.

"That's a fine way to treat me after I defeated the replicators. I wouldn't want to ever work here if you did that. I think… I think you're just afraid of losing me so soon."

"Of course we are!" Sam answered.

"And perhaps you should remember that I only recently lost my parents. Maybe I need a bit of room to adjust?"

"There won't be much room on Prometheus."

"Dad, you know what I mean. Look, I'm moving to a new city with new parents and new friends. And I'll need to start a new research project too. So while I'm moving between things, it's a perfect time to do a bit of travel. I'd really enjoy to see another galaxy and help out if possible, and if I have to spend weeks cramped in a cabin with my laptop, that's okay with me."

Jack and Sam looked at each other. "I think she can handle it," Sam put forth.

"It's up to Hammond and the president. And the IOA, I suppose," Jack finally answered. "We'll see what happens."

Cynthia gave a slight smile and nodded. "I'll be in my room."

"Janet says Daniel is recovering quickly, so if you're going, it will be two days from now. We'd better put that shopping trip down for tomorrow."

"Sounds good." Cynthia realised how grateful she was that her parents were considering letter her go, so she reached out for a three-cornered hug.

_In a high-rise office..._

Charlotte Mayfield, VP of Farrow-Marshall aeronautics, sat at her shiny black desk with a smile. She had received some most excellent news, which pleased both the woman and the Goa'uld Athena within her. She'd already learned that Ba'al's invasion had failed – through no fault of her own. While she had helped facilitate this plan, she'd carefully distanced herself, to ensure her cover remained. Now she was delighted to hear that the old schemer was dead. As a result, his territory was ripe for the taking, and who better to take it than his former brief ally? With the power of Ba'al's fleet and the resources of Earth, the galaxy - no, the universe - was hers for the taking.

Athena saw the chance to rise far about the System Lords. They had seen her as insignificant, but that would chance soon. Earth would be the brightest of jewels in her crown of achievement. Many before her had attempted to subjugate or destroy Earth. This was foolish, she realised. A far better path was to guide Earth, to build and nurture it into a powerful force. The Tau'ri had no room for tyrannical gods. Heroes and saviours appealed to them, so that was what she would become.

Far more could be achieved by craftily using the Tau'ri, rather than fighting them. Destroying such a planet would be a pitiful waste. With careful manoeuvring, the very people who had tried to destroy the System Lords would be her willing servants. If not, the rest of Earth's population would deal with them as they would look upon her as their benefactor. With the strategic position of Charlotte Mayfield, the leadership of Athena, and careful nudging by her children, Earth would achieve it's full potential and dominate the universe.

The woman – and the parasite – rubbed her hands together in anticipation of the power she would soon hold. It would be glorious.

�

AN: Well, that's it for Aperture Science Applied.� Thanks for reading!� I rather enjoyed writing this, particularly when things went differently to what I had planned.  
This tale might be over, but obviously the story is not.� Which is why it is is continued in...  
Applications of Replication.� Coming very soon to a fanfictiondotnet near you. 


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